


i'll meet you there

by neonheartbeat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Is a Huge Virgin, Crying, Dry Humping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Exegol, F/M, First Time Blow Jobs, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Force Ghost Leia Organa, Force Ghost Luke Skywalker, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force Healing, Gen, Gentleness, HEA, Hand & Finger Kink, Hurt/Comfort, Hypersensitivity, I reject LFL canon and substitute my own, Kissing, Lothal, Multi, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Premature Ejaculation, Rey (Star Wars) is a Mess, Sex Fantasy Force Bond Sharing Two: Electric Boogaloo, Sexual Roleplay, Sharing a Body, Slow Burn, TRoS Spoilers, Vaginal Fingering, World Between Worlds, a remnant of a soul sharing a body with a human being goes about as well as you'd expect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22291591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neonheartbeat/pseuds/neonheartbeat
Summary: TheFinal Order has been defeated and peace was supposed to return, but in the desolate sands of Tatooine, Rey's seemingly being haunted by something she doesn't understand. With the help of an old friend, she'll discover the truth and fight to bring back what she's lost-- the other half of her soul.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Rey & Luke Skywalker, Rey & Beaumont Kin, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 100
Kudos: 231





	1. ghost

**Author's Note:**

> in short, a post tros fix-it fic.

She's a strange one, this Rey Skywalker. All the neighbors, for scores of klicks around, mostly kept their distance—even after the usual welcome gifts of food and tools were dropped off and small talk was made in the bright sunslight, Rey Skywalker had kept herself at arms' length and continued to be cool and distant as the moon. She had only been at the old Lars homestead for two weeks, but already the sand had been swept away—she had had a droid, but a ship from offworld had come and got the droid a week and a half ago and now it was only Rey, who walked back and forth in the sand every day, on the dunes, and often seemed to speak to herself: yes, an odd one indeed, but the desert heat sometimes did strange things to offworlders' minds. 

From sunsrise to sunset, she walked on the sand. _She's a Resistance hero,_ the neighbors told themselves, at home and in Mos Eisley and wherever else they might be. _A hero, a Jedi, who defeated evil and came back from the dead._ It's been broadcast on the Holonet from the Core to the Outer Rim: everyone knew the story—or most of it, anyway: how she went to Exegol to face down the shade of the Emperor, how Kylo Ren, the Supreme Leader, came to her aid, how the galaxy arrived to save the Resistance. The children whispered her name to each other at play, at night, in the alleys. They played at being Rey, the hero; at being Ren, at being Resistance. They looked at her from afar, whispering in delight behind their hands, and ran away when she turned toward them, too shy to speak. 

For her part, Rey did not pursue conversation. She went to the spaceports and stations for what she needed and went back to the homestead on the speederbike she'd put together from parts and bits, streaking across the sand in a blur. 

* * *

They had come to her, Luke and Leia, the day she had arrived. They had disappeared soon after a short conversation, one that Rey had felt fell woefully short of what needed to be said between them—they had not come back, only at erratic and odd times, and even then it was usually either Luke or Leia, not both of them together. Force-ghosts were not consistent with their appearances: likely they had some Force-business to attend to in the Force, or in the afterlife, or—well, Rey didn't know. Luke wasn’t saying much about the details, and neither was Leia. 

No other ghosts made any house calls. Rey tried her best not to think about that: she had heard so many voices—she thought: most of the proceedings after she'd collapsed to the cold stone were hazy, like a dream—that surely some more beings might materialize, to see her, give her company, give her counsel. Some. Not all: it didn’t need to be all. Maybe just one in particular— 

She pushed the thought from her mind furiously. That was too painful, too raw and open still, like touching an exposed wire, and she must focus if she was to become the best Jedi she could be in her self-imposed exile. The Resistance might need her: the New Republic, the plans she'd found for starting a new Jedi Academy—or at least some kind of training ground for young Force-sensitives, it wouldn't have to be strictly Jedi, as Luke had informed her that there was great benefit to finding a middle ground, neither dark nor light. 

At night, it was harder to not think. At night, thoughts entered her mind unwillingly, thoughts about _him_ , memories of aching and burning—not all of them of pain. _His mouth, his hands, his body._ The body that had gone slack and pale and cold as she had clung to him, the body falling away, the body disappearing into nothingness and leaving his clothing behind. 

Rey hadn’t known what to do with it. Leaving it behind felt too disrespectful, especially to the man who had saved her life: the sensation of being woken by a tingling burn in her belly had been distinctive and unpleasant as a dash of cold water to the face. _Let me sleep,_ she had thought, irritated, and clutched at the unfamiliar weight on her waist—then, _then_ she'd seen him, eyes shut and shoulders relaxed in deep meditation, and she'd _known_ , and— 

She sat up sharply in one of the rooms she had swept out, the one she used as a bedroom. No, she didn't want to think about that. Not now, not ever: he was gone, if not into the Force then into nothing, and even if he had vanished before her eyes, he had not come to her. 

* * *

In Mos Eisley, three days later, she was standing at a perfectly ordinary stall, haggling for fresh bread, when she caught a glimpse of dark hair, broad shoulders, and dark clothing as she handed over her last offer, three shards of smelt. 

Rey turned, shaken, but the man was already walking away, and her heart sang _Ben!_ and she took a halting step forward, almost leaving the bread behind. He turned, casting his profile into view, and her heart sank down again, all the way to the ground: it wasn't him. The man had his height, and similar build and coloring, but there the resemblance ended. There was an odd look in his eyes, and he was looking at her, with an almost confused expression, but his face was kind and open. 

For one, brief, fleeting moment she considered chasing after him, speaking to him, taking him back to the homestead and seeking some form of solace in a stranger. _Would he let me call him Ben?_ she thought, dizzy with the audacity of the idea. The man looked away, after she made no move to speak. The spell was broken, and Rey was left with only embarrassment and shame in the wake of her error. 

* * *

She dreamed that night again that her room was on fire, the walls glowing with brilliant orange flame and her body lying still and noiseless in the inferno. She was burning, on fire, and Palpatine loomed above her, laughing like a madman with lightning crackling from his fingers. It was an old dream, one she hadn't been able to shake for weeks, but despite that she shouted in her sleep, frozen, unable to move as he held here there and she was _burning…_

_Rey. It's only a dream._

A dream. Yes. It must be a dream. Rey breathed in and reached out, and with a flick of the Force, the dream vanished like mist. She was in a peacefully bright room, golden and full of light streaming through the walls. One of her hands found her eyes, screening the light, and her hand shone pink and gold, the thin skin between her fingers translucent. She could almost see every bone, every delicate joint. 

_That's better._

The voice was one that was comforting, gentle. Rey could not place it. She thought it might be her father, but that wasn't right—then she thought it was Han, but that wasn't quite correct either. Either way, she eased into peace, and soon fell into a soft black sleep from which was born no dreams. 

* * *

The suns came shining through the door the next morning, early and bright. Rey squinted, a hand over her eyes, and dragged herself up, groaning. The Force curled around her, strangely sluggish as it had been since Exegol, but that was no matter: she needed to bathe. It had been almost three weeks since her last real bath, and since water was hard to come by out here, it was the newly-repaired sonic fresher for her this morning. 

On her way to the fresher, she checked her comlink. There was a message from Beaumont Kin waiting to be read, and she played it on her way up the stairs. " _Rey! Hope this finds you well. I received your message about—well, you know, and I think I might have found a lead in an old artifact from_ _M_ _oraband_ _. Can't say for sure. I've also dug up some of my old research for you. When you get a moment, comm me back."_

Rey let the corner of her mouth quirk up a little. She liked Beaumont: the linguist-turned-intel officer had always been an asset to the Resistance, and now was trying to settle back into his offices on Lerct, but was always up for helping out a friend in need. She still had plenty of his notes, scribbled on flimsiplast, laid out neatly in her ancient Jedi texts. His translation skills had been more than welcome as she'd pored through unreadable manuscripts. Quickly, she commed him back as she started the fresher up, thumbing the switch. "Professor Kin, thank you so much. If you could give me as much detail about the artifact once you've had time to study it, I would appreciate it." 

If Luke and Leia were playing coy about the afterlife, then there was no reason, Rey thought as she stripped and hopped into the fresher, that she shouldn't do her own research. The text had spoken of an eternal life, a life beyond death, of death and life inextricably tied, and mentions had been made of some place called the "Wellspring of Life" but where it was, Rey had no idea. Kin's artifact from Moraband was her first clue as to any real existence of such a place, and he had suggested two other planets for them to start looking into, as well. They were all Sith worlds, and Rey had shirked from the idea of stepping foot into any place the Sith had ever been again, but fortunately Kin was a bit of a collector and had kept a lot of items from his past travels. _Life beyond death._ Perhaps she could find the answer as to why B—why certain figures did not appear, and why others did: it would be valuable research into the mysteries of life, from a Jedi perspective, and it wasn't as if she desired the knowledge to gain power, just that— 

Well, she didn't precisely know what she wanted out of it, except she did know, wholly and completely, but she would not allow herself to think of it for a moment. _If I think of it, I am lost. I will shatter._

Rey stepped out of the fresher, dry and clean from the sonic pulses, and tugged on her clothing, finger-combing out her hair and tying half of it up into a single knot atop her head, the rest flowing free. It was cool inside the house, and she didn't mind the extra layer of hair on the back of her neck if she wasn't going outside. There was so much to do inside today: clean the kitchen, sweep the floors clear of sand, fix the moisture vaporators out in the field— 

She stopped short, something cold in her belly coiling into her heart. 

There was a word drawn into the coating of dust on the fresher mirror, written in clumsy, pained Aurebesh from left to right, and the word certainly hadn't been there when she had entered the fresher: it was one word, three characters, familiar and entirely alien. 

_R_ _E_ _Y_

* * *

Dusk fell across the homestead as Rey ate her evening meal outside in the sunken courtyard, pointedly not looking at the doorway to the fresher, which gaped at her like an open maw, waiting greedily to suck her back in. She had refused to go back inside all day, even going so far as to go dig a hole in the dunes to answer the call of nature: _nothing_ would get her back in that room. It couldn't be a Force ghost: Luke and Leia would never play a joke on her like that without appearing. Rey remembered tales of ghosts on Jakku, real ghosts, not benevolent, blue-edged spirits—the kinds of ghosts that sought revenge, that haunted old ruins like this to scare away the inhabitants. 

"I won't go," she whispered. "I won't." There was a remedy for ghosts the old women had told her about: you made a little pouch with red cloth, a crystal, a leaf, and dunked it in water, then left it outside your door, and they would leave you be. _What's the harm in trying?_ she thought, shrugging. It might help her sleep easier, at least. 

The comm at her waist went off insistently, and she jumped almost half a foot. "Hello!" she said, gripping it like a lifeline. "Doctor Kin?" 

His voice, the soft, rough lilt of it, came pouring through. " _You know you can call me Beaumont, Rey. We're friends."_

"Beaumont, then. Thank goodness you've called. What have you found?" 

" _The artifact from_ _Moraband_ _appears to be something similar to a_ _wayfinder_ _, but I believe instead of a map, it contains a message. I'm working on opening it, but it's not very simple to crack."_

Rey frowned. "You may need to bring it to me. If it's from Moraband, it probably needs to be opened with the Force. Don't break it." 

" _Copy that. I'll do everything I can_ _, and I'll update you if I succeed."_

"Thank you, Beaumont. May the Force be with you." She commed off and set the link aside, then hesitated a moment. There was still the question of the haunted fresher, so quickly Rey threw together the remedy: red cloth salvaged from her old training course, a shard of kyber crystal, a leaf from a funnelflower straggling to grow by one of the vaporators, a precious bit of water from the reservoir. The tiny bundle, clutched in her hands, was walked step by step to the fresher door, and it was there that she paused: the Force was seething, rippling, a nexus somewhere close by that she could not pin down. 

"Who _are_ you?" she whispered, half-afraid to hear an answer as she edged toward the door. Her guard was up, every hair on the back of her neck prickling like thorns. The doorway yawn ed, open and black and inviting, _come and see, come and see._

She dropped the bundle at the threshold and hastily retreated to the safety of the courtyard, drenched in hot sun, warm and baking and bright, and hurried back up to the surface via the stairs, desperate to escape that accusing, staring doorway. 

* * *

That evening, when it was too dangerous to venture outside to dig a hole, Rey switched on her portable glowlamp and made the nerve-wracking trek to the fresher, stepping into the door…but there was no trace left of the Force gathered here: not a single hair on her body stood to attention. It was only a dark, quiet fresher. She checked the mirror, half-afraid there would be more, but stopped short, the glowlamp trembling in her hands. Even without the Force signaling to her that something was wrong, the sight made her arms prickle with unease. 

The letters were gone from the mirror. 

Not wiped clean: there were no streaks or smears where a hand might have erased them out of the dust—simply gone, the dust undisturbed as if it had never been touched at all. 


	2. façade

"I think I'm losing my mind," she confided to Luke, during their next meeting. He sat, as ever, vaguely transparent at the dining table in the swept-out kitchen. 

"You wouldn't be the first," he said, looking around the room. "I lost mine too, all cooped up in here for years. The planet's enough to drive anyone crazy. Why are you staying here?" 

"I thought I would…find answers in the Force here. I don't know what I'm finding instead." Rey sighed. "And I'm still waiting for Beaumont to comm me about something he's got—" She shut her mouth abruptly. Even Luke would likely not take well to the idea that she was inspecting Sith artifacts. "I'm just tired. The Resistance is transporting all these First Order officers to be tried on Chandrila, and I'm sitting here doing nothing." 

Luke shook his head, fuzzy with blue light. "You've chosen to set yourself apart for a while. I know you needed time." 

"And I'm…afraid," she confessed. "Palpatine said that if I struck him down, I would—he would enter my body, along with all the Sith. I turned his own attack on him, and killed him." 

"You're worried he might be inside you?" Luke looked perturbed. "I think you'd know." 

"But what if I didn't?" Rey stood, agitated, and paced. “How would I know if it was _him_ , or something else?” 

Luke's expression changed to one of concern. "Something's happened. What is it?" 

Rey gave up. "I—it began a week ago. My name was—written, in the sand on a mirror, and I felt like the Force was trying to tell me something. It was so strong, right there, and I ran—I was scared, and when I went back in, everything was back to normal. No name. And since then, things have started moving. Little things, like spanners or parts not being where I put them, but somewhere else. And I keep having these dreams—" 

"What kind of dreams?" 

"I don't know. Nightmares, usually where Palpatine is coming for me, or I'm going to him, and then—someone's speaking to me, in my dream." Rey shifted uncomfortably. "Someone I don't know, can't really recognize. Or I have dreams where I'm in this black void, nothing there but voices, and can't move." 

"Mmm." Luke stroked his beard with a finger. "Your fear of Palpatine may be manifesting itself subconsciously. You should meditate on this." 

Rey did not want to meditate. "It couldn't be anything else? This place isn't haunted, is it?" 

"Well, it certainly wasn't fifty years ago. Who knows what's made it home since then?" Luke smiled, but at the stricken look on her face he quickly changed tack. "Sorry. Bad joke. No, it's not haunted, and anyway, life-forms that aren't Force-sensitive cannot return from the dead to visit, Rey. There's always an explanation for things that seem unexplainable." 

"Like…doing it myself and not remembering. Being taken over by the Emperor's ghost." Rey shuddered. 

Luke wasn’t having it. "Whatever it is, you must face your fear, Rey. You have done it before. The path of a Jedi is to accept—" 

"I don't _want_ to face this." She whirled on him. "If I'm carrying a piece of the Emperor inside me, then I—I can't live in the galaxy. He'll rise again, using me, and it will just go on and on—" 

Luke looked very concerned. "Rey. Calm yourself. There's no—" 

"I'll—cut myself off from the Force, as you did. I'll die here. I can't let him—" 

"Rey, _no_. That's not a path you can follow. Doing it would kill you." 

"It didn't kill _you_!" 

"I wasn't a dyad, Rey." His voice was calm and gentle, and Rey realized with a shock that this was the first time he'd spoken to her about her connection, her bond, _him_ — "The Force is inextricably entwined with who you are." 

"Yeah, well," she said, tears threatening to strangle her. "Maybe it was. Not anymore." She scrubbed a hand across her eyes. "That's been cut out of me. It's gone. And so is—" 

But Luke had left already, nothing but calm and quiet air in the space where he had been. 

* * *

Rey trudged up to the ridge the next morning, watching the suns rise and bathe the landscape in a soft, red-gold glow. It was peaceful up here, alone, with the wind and the sand, or at least she tried to tell herself that. She stretched and sat, closing her eyes, and that was when the faintest, subtlest touch, like a finger drawn across her neck, startled her into leaping to her feet and whirling around. 

Nobody was there. She ran to the edge of the sunken courtyard. "Hello?" she shouted idiotically down into the pit. There was no answer, only the wind. Rey slid down the sand to the stairs, furious: what _was_ this thing that kept prodding at her? "I said, hello?" She stepped down to the courtyard and ran to the center, looking up at the rose-colored circle of sky above her head. The Force gathered and swelled like a wave over her, like fabric pulled into a knot: the nexus had returned. 

_Rey._

The voice had no tone, no intonation, no mood: it came from inside her head, outside her body, everywhere. Rey staggered sideways and clutched at her head. "Go away!" she shouted. "Leave me alone!" 

_Rey._

"I said, _go!_ " she screamed, and backed into the closest wall, heart pounding. "Whatever you are—" 

_Rey. Don't be afraid._ The voice was still toneless, as if meaning without mood was being trickled directly into her mind, but that did nothing to quell her terror. 

"I know what you are," she spat. "Palpatine. Get out of my _head_ !" T he presence faded, the Force dissipating, and she was left entirely alone, nothing but the wind curling around her body. Rey dropped to her knees, shivering in spite of the hot, dry air. _I can't stay here. I can't. I have to go._

Her comm crackled to life. " _Rey?"_

She snatched it up in relief. "Beaumont! Any news?" 

" _Not as of yet. Still wo_ _rking on the_ _Moraband_ _artifact. I think it might be a wiser course of action to bring it to you."_

Rey suddenly couldn't stand to remain here alone for one more day, and clung to the thought of company, of any other presence here besides ghosts and visions, like a lifeline. "Yes! I mean, yes, I think that's a wiser course of action, and while you're here you can go through my Jedi texts and see if you can find anything." 

" _I have to tell you, Rey. This whole life and death mysteries thing… it might be better if you consulted with a biophysicist, or—or anyone but me."_ Beaumont sounded wary. " _I don't really know what kind of power we'd be messing with."_

"I'd rather not consult with anyone I didn't trust," said Rey. "You know I have to make sure Palpatine can't ever rise again, can't come back." 

" _I know you've been thinking about it a lot, for certain,"_ he said. " _Right. I'll take leave and hop the next transport to the Outer Rim."_

"Thank you. There will be a beacon for you, activated in the homestead. Follow the coordinates. I'll see you soon." Rey commed off and sighed deeply. The conversation had served to calm her nerves, but she still felt as if someone was watching her—though that could just have been the effect of the open, black doorways, which she did not feel very comfortable turning her back on, especially at night. If the weather had been better, she would have slept outside in the courtyard, but the way the breeze was picking up from the south, that wasn't a good idea. Inside it was, then, and ghosts be damned. 

* * *

Rey dreamed that night she was lying on her back in bed, a starfield whirling overhead in dizzying streaks of blue and white. Hyperspace, she thought, vaguely. How pretty: the stars all bleeding, the light passing over her. The Force was there, waiting, so she reached out, dipping into it lightly, as if her finger was carving through a river of cool flame. 

_Rey._ A voice was speaking, toneless as if it was being produced by something without vocal cords, without air, without breath. _I see it._

"It's beautiful," she said, tracing her hand through the river of the Force, which was not a river anymore, but a field of bending flowers, green and green as far as the eye could see. "I never knew there was so much green in the entire galaxy." 

_Go deeper._ The voice was louder, clearer as she stepped into the field, bathed in light of a thousand colors she had no names for that deepened as she went further. _Deeper, Rey. Deeper. Go. Go—_

Her hand closed on another hand, a hand that wasn't her own, and a flash of terrifically quick images bombarded her mind— 

— _herself on the throne of the_ _Sith_ _,_ _black-cloaked, white-eyed—_

— _a thousand planets streaking past in a blaze of color and light—_

— _a pale hand, clawing at rock—_

— _twin blades of blue sabers crossed, lightning crackling at the center—_

— _an endless void of black on black, crossed by thin white lines and whorls like gravity wells—_

— _a_ _hundred_ _voice_ _s_ _bellowing A DYAD IN THE FORCE, A POWER LIKE LIFE ITSELF—_

—and Rey woke, screaming, to find her hand clasped around nothing, with a light-negative image of Ben Solo's last smile burned behind her eyes, and a thunderous bellow echoing in her ears. 

* * *

Beaumont Kin landed on Tatooine in a dust storm, just past the outer boundary of the old Lars homestead, his beacon chirping steadily as he felt the ground come up to cradle his borrowed X-wing's landing gear. Rey was nowhere in sight. Pity, that: she was likely inside the sunken courtyard he could see from the cockpit, hunkered down to wait out the storm. Beaumont swung out of his seat, tugged a wrap across his nose and face, and lifted the canopy, climbing down as fast as he could with his bag slung over his shoulder. The sand bit into his skin like a thousand little needles, and he hurried to the dome of the entrance, descending down the steps into the dark. "Rey?" he called out. 

Nobody answered. Beaumont frowned. He wasn't Force sensitive in the slightest, but the uneasiness curling in his gut signaled that something was off. Down into the entry room he went, the storm howling overhead, and made his way into the central hall, shining his glowlamp over the walls. "Rey?" Another step, and another, and he was in the courtyard, being buffeted again by sand and wind in the raging dark. He edged around the wall to the left, back pressed against it, until he reached a door. It slid open, and Beaumont fell into a whirring, humming room, lit by a single glowlamp. He turned, trying to get his bearings, and saw Rey, sitting huddled up against the wall, fiddling with a piece of equipment. 

"Rey?" asked Beaumont, confused. 

"It's fine," she said, as if she wasn't even really talking to him. "Fine. Isn't hurting anymore. I just have to connect the parameters of the spanner with the—the—field, generational field of the protective shield, and we can block the storm out. Landing must have been rough." 

So she did know he was there. "Are you all right?" 

Rey laughed, eyes half-wild and bright as she finally looked at him. "Fine! Totally fine. Never better." 

He frowned. "What…what's not hurting anymore?" 

"Nothing! Nothing. Did you bring the thing from Moraband?" Rey stood, and Beaumont saw that her clothing was dirty and torn, her face faring no better, her hair matted and lank with grease. One quick movement of fiddling with the equipment inside the room, and the noise of the outside storm had quieted to a muffled hum, the shield springing to life over their heads. "There. See? I can fix it. I can fix anything." 

"I see that," he said carefully, not wanting to agitate her seemingly manic state further. "Um, Rey. When was the last time you ate?" 

She shrugged that off, edging past him and into the courtyard. "Oh, I have so much to do," she said, dark-circled eyes darting around the sand piled up. "Sweep this out with the static broom, get it clean—" 

"Rey," he said, trying not to let the pity leak out of his voice as she flitted to the wall. 

"—and after that, I have to do some routine maintenance on the eastern field vaporators, I can do it in the storm—" 

Beaumont reached for her. "Rey. You need to eat." 

She shrugged him off. "I don't have the time. Where's the artifact?" 

"In my bag. Can you just—slow down for a moment?" 

"There's no time. You don't understand." Rey ran a hand through her greasy, unkempt hair and paced, as if keeping still was impossible. "I think Palpatine's survived, and I think he's inside me. I'm—seeing visions, weird things are happening, I don't know what to do, and I've—I've tried to block out the Force, because if I don't have access to it then neither does he, if he's inside me. And it's working! It's working. As long as I don't sleep, or let my guard down for a second—" 

"Whoa, whoa. Hold on. Slow down." Beaumont took a step toward her, hand on the strap of his bag. "How long has this been going on?" 

"About a—a week. Maybe more. I don't know." Rey leaned against the wall for a moment, visibly weak, and he reached for her, but she jerked herself back upright. "No, I told you. I'm fine." 

Beaumont brandished a finger, as he might have done at a student who hadn't studied properly for their history exam. "You are not fine. I'm comming General Dameron the minute this storm passes and a signal can be gotten to—" 

"No!" she bellowed, frantic, and he paused, wondering what the hell was really going on here. "No. Don't. It's not—he doesn't, he won't understand." 

Beaumont decided he would approach this with all the careful exploration of a TA trying to work out a normally straight-marks student's sudden decline in quality. "Okay. Then let me try to help. Is that all right?" 

Rey paused, looking at him. "Okay," she said finally. 

"What…things are happening? Can you tell me why you think Palpatine is alive?" 

"Stuff is…moving. Around the homestead." Rey looked sick as she leaned against the wall. "Little things move from where I put them, messages being left that are mostly my name—written on mirrors and in the dust on tables. I keep—kept—waking up in the wrong rooms, places I didn't go to sleep in. I kept dreaming about him. Palpatine. Seeing—seeing—" Her mouth clamped into a tight little line. "Seeing things I want to forget about," she croaked at last. 

Beaumont frowned. "So you think…what, that you're being possessed?" 

"Something like that." Rey shut her eyes, and he could see the hard lines of stress and hunger revealed as she relaxed at last. "I don't know what to do. I can't—go on like this." A tear dripped down her dirty cheek, and she rubbed at it, smearing her face with grime. 

"Maybe this will bring you some answers, eh?" He pulled the artifact out of his bag, and Rey's eyes widened as she saw it: a device just large enough to fit comfortably in his palm, a gleaming thing with ten sides, made of electrum and some crystalline material. 

"It's…beautiful," she murmured, reaching for it automatically, but yanking her hand back. "Is it safe?" 

"As far as I can tell. Nothing I've been able to do can get it to do anything. My research suggests that it's called a datacron, and that it's very, very old. And I don't think it's Sith." 

"No?" Rey asked, unable to tear her eyes away. 

"No. Sith artifacts are normally pyramid-shaped: they reflect the idea of power at the top crushing down the many at the base. Jedi artifacts are…cubes, or polyhedrons, even on all sides. This one is a—" 

"Dodecahedron," she whispered, looking at it. "So…it's Jedi? But I thought Moraband was a Sith world." 

Beaumont leaned forward, his academic sense of excitement momentarily overtaking his concern for her wellbeing. "It was. But I found this there, in a secret cache, below where I think a massive Sith holocron had been, long ago. According to the texts you have, this thing is ancient, and contains information about some sort of doorway to something even Palpatine couldn't find." 

Rey recoiled immediately, as if she'd been shot with a blaster, the excitement in her eyes gone. "No. _No._ You can't—I can't touch this, if it's something he wanted. If he's inside me, then I can't touch it. He'll use me to get to whatever it is. I _can't._ " 

Beaumont shook his head. "You don't know for sure if that's what's wrong. What if—what if the Force is just being a bit strange? 

Rey shook her head, backing up. "That's not how the Force works." 

"But you've…tried to shut it off? Maybe it's just a bit on the fritz." 

She ignored him. "Get that thing away from me. Please. I don't want to look at it, or touch it." 

"Rey—" 

"Dr. Kin, _please._ " She looked so horrified and small and scared that he couldn't help but step back, putting the datacron back into his bag. 

"Okay. I'll—just hang out around here for a bit. Until the storm passes. Have you got a static broom I could use to help you clean out the courtyard?" 

Relief swept over her exhausted face. "Yes. In the closet. I'll get you one." 


	3. connection

Rey paced around the courtyard, muttering to herself as Beaumont watched from his spot by the door to the dining area. She had been moving constantly for at least a day and a half, and she was pretty sure that only the Force was keeping her physically on her feet. She refused to reach out with it spiritually, mentally, only keeping it flowing _in_ : she was so, so tired, and kept herself moving, moving, always moving, refusing to slow down. 

Datacron. Jedi. Sith. Doorway. The possibility of destroying Palpatine, once and for all, loomed enticingly in from of her, and she could not bring herself to push past her fear and take it with a full hand. _What if it's a trap? What if I open myself to something I can't stop?_

Luke's words came back to her. _You must face your fear._

He was right. Of course he was. This was it, then. Her only chance to find answers, and fear was clouding her judgment: this could not be allowed to happen. Rey stopped, turned, and sat plump down in the sand, allowing herself to finally, really relax for the first time in days, and almost immediately felt bone-deep exhaustion wash over her body, stilling her mind into a static, immovable puddle. 

_Let go. Face it._

"Keep watch," she muttered to Beaumont, and shut her eyes, feeling herself slip away, way into the relief of meditation, finding her connection to the Force once more: deep and strong and true. It flowed into her, took her mind far away from her body—her body was nothing. The true _her_ was only light, pure and solid and luminous, reaching out somewhere far beyond where she could go. 

_The light. It's always been there. Reach out._

And once she could reach out no more, once she had embraced all she was, she turned her vision inside herself, seeking out the thing she most feared. 

Darkness. Darkness, and a presence that she recoiled from on instinct: _get out of my head!_ Darkness and light, two sides of the same coin , two halves of a face. _Not me and Palpatine. No. Please. Anything._

Something stirred, something was moving in the shadows. Rey was standing on a flat, dark surface, in a dark, featureless room, and something was coming toward her. 

_Rey._

She shuddered at the voice, that blank, toneless thing that plucked at her from the inside, but mustered up her courage to answer, to not run away again. "I'm here. What do you want?" 

_Rey._

"I'm here." 

_Rey._ Sensation trickled up her shoulder, across her throat, her cheek. It felt like a tendril, or a hand; a comfort and not a danger. She wasn't sure the Voice was sentient: it didn't feel as if it heard her, but the touch seemed purposeful, careful. _Don't be afraid._

She stood her ground. "You said that before. What are you? What do you want?" 

_I was trying…_ the Voice trailed off, lost and meandering. _It was dark._

"It's dark now." Rey turned, looking, but no form materialized. "Tell me what you came to say." 

_I'm… here. It's so dark._

She was beginning to get a little frustrated at the lack of answers from the Voice. Palpatine hadn’t been this disconnected. "Your name. Just tell me your name." 

_I don't know._ _I had one. I think._ The sensation moved across her body again, soft and reluctant, as if her form might burn whatever was touching her. _It was dark. You were there. Now I'm…here._

"Where's _here_?" 

_You're so… warm. Alive._ The touch ghosted over her arms. _It's so cold here…_

Rey reached out, unable to see anyone, but feeling sorry for whoever the Voice was. "Can you come here? I can't see you. Let me help you." 

_I'm with you, Rey. Always. I'm with you_ _._

A cold gust of wind blew across her back, and Rey turned to see, to her cold terror, the throne of the Sith: black-spiked, outreaching like a hundred accusing fingers. A black-robed figure, swaying mechanically, took up the whole ground, looming over her like some horrible specter of death, and she backed away in fear. 

The Voice was there. _Don't be afraid. It's only a vision, Rey._

Only a dream, a nightmare, a memory. Yes. She stood her ground and squared her shoulders. "I'm not afraid," she said aloud, and the figure shook like a beaten curtain. "I'm not afraid of you. You're dead. I defeated you, and you'll never touch anyone again." 

The vision crackled and fell away, and she was hurtling through a void, alone and small and nothing. _Find a place, Rey,_ said the Voice. _Think of a place. Focus._

Takodana. She immediately thought of Takodana: green and lush and full of life, jungle and lake, earth and stone, and with a _thump_ her feet landed on good solid ground, the world around her snapping to life with an odd, dreamy, unfocused quality. The bracken at her feet was sharp and clear, and so were the rocks on either side, but the air was foggy, the trees indistinct. "Why does it look like that?" 

The Voice spoke. _It's your memory. Focus._

Rey concentrated, bringing back her memories of this place. "This is where I first met…" She couldn't say the name: it was too painful, too sharp. Instead, she looked at the trees, the rocks. Yes, that had been shaped just so, and there, those branches had stretched overhead… Detail clarified, and she found herself standing in the forest again, the birds singing in the trees, the insects buzzing just as they had in her memories. Every detail was perfect, except one. 

The Voice still had no tone, but it was impossible to not get a mildly perturbed flavor off it. _You think s_ _omething is missing. I can sense it._

"It's… nothing." Rey looked at the ground where he should have been, and her heart clenched. "Someone I… hated, for a long time, and grew to understand, and…" Her throat choked up with unwanted tears. 

_You loved him. I see it in your memory._

"Oh, shut up," she said, scrubbing a hand across her eyes. "If you're inside my head, the least you could do is not poke around. You'll drive me crazy." 

_Sorry._ The Voice went quiet, seeming to withdraw, and it seemed for a moment like Rey could feel it—a warm, tingling sensation in her belly, like a soft glow, curled around her, nestling. 

"Are you… the Force?" She turned, enjoying the sensation of the sun on her cheeks, and the humidity in the air. It was only a memory, but that did not make it any less pleasant. 

_No. I mean…_ There was a small shifting, as if of confusion. _I'm in the Force. Part of the Force. I thought you'd remember me. Has it been long?_

"Remember you?" Rey frowned. "You said you had a name." 

_Yes. You said it. I remember. You looked at me…_ The Voice weakened slightly. _It was the last thing I heard._

"The last thing…" She paused, stricken, and collapsed to her knees, hands shaking. "Oh, R'iia's _ass._ B— _Ben?"_

_Ben. That's it. That's my name._

She sucked in a gulp of air and burst into tears, clinging to her own shoulders as she rocked on the forest floor. "Tell me—tell me something only Ben and I would know—I have to know it's you and not—not something else." 

_Only we would know…_ the Voice trailed away for a moment, then came back. _One._ _You told me once you saw that I was afraid I would never be as strong as Vader. Two. The Force connected us one time while I was in the fresher—I remember how embarrassed we both were. Three._ _You…kissed me._ _I think._

"Okay, okay. I believe you." Rey wiped her eyes furiously, trying to stem the flood. "How—is it really you? You died, Ben. You—disappeared in front of me. How can you be _speaking_ to me?" 

_I don't know. I just… drifted away, and something—something pulled away from me, and I was here. With you._ _Not all of me. That's somewhere else._

"But I can _feel_ you," she whispered, fresh tears trickling down her cheeks. "I can feel when you touch me." 

_That's not really me. It's just the Force. I've been trying… sometimes I can reach out enough, when I'm stronger, and touch things. Make them move. Affect reality._

"You wrote my name in the dust on the mirror," Rey said, still shaking. "I thought—I thought I was being haunted. You can't—can you appear to me? Like—a Force-ghost?" 

_No. Not yet. That's a talent only the masters of the Jedi ever discovered. It's strange. I keep remembering more, talking to you…_

"What about here? I'm meditating. This is… this is all the Force." Rey gestured at the trees, the bracken, the rocks. "Could you appear here? So I could see you?" 

_I don't know. I think…_ There was a pause, a little waver in the Force. _If you chose_ _a form, I might be able to use it._

She had to see him again, _had to,_ even if it took everything she had. "Hold on." Fighting to concentrate, she wiped more dampness from her eyes, and shut them. "It might be easier to just—remember you here, as you looked." And it was easier: easier to remember him cloaked and cowled in black, helmeted, saber spitting fire: she remembered his walk, his movement, every little expression colored by her own fear. 

Kylo Ren materialized before her, saber on and crackling with heat. She sucked in a breath, trying to concentrate on him, to not let the memory fade, and his voice—his _voice_ —came from the mask, heavily modulated. "Rey?" 

She jerked to her feet at once. "You can see me?" 

The saber remained where it was, and a burst of static, like a gasp of air, emerged from the mask. "Yes. _Yes._ I can see you. I can't… I can't feel my body. I can't feel anything. Or move." 

"That's all right," she managed, wiping her eyes and nose as she fought the urge to fling her arms around his neck. "It's okay. I'm—I'm going to find a way to fix this. I'll bring you back—" 

"I don't think you can," he said softly. “I don’t think there’s a way.” 

Rey shook her head. "Then I’ll find a way. There must be a reason you're stuck with me like this. Tied to me, or something." 

"I bled my life force into you. I'm alive _in_ you. I don't know anything beyond that." He sounded almost resigned, and she hated it: when had this man ever been resigned to anything in his life? 

"I'm not going to leave it at that," she snapped. "I'm bringing you back. You—this, this must be something I can use, something I can research—" 

"Rey. There's nothing, no record. We're a dyad. That hasn't been seen in thousands of years, let alone one whose half died. Any record of that has been lost by now." 

"What if there was a chance?" she asked, stepping towards him. "Even a small one. The Force must have kept you with me for a reason. Do you—don't you _want_ to come back?" 

A surge of emotion washed over her: grief, desperation, conflict—but the feelings didn’t belong to her. Wordless, the form in front of her vanished, and Rey turned, frightened, as the memory of Takodana shattered and she opened her eyes— 

She was floating upside down, in a meditative position, three meters above the courtyard of the Lars homestead, and Beaumont Kin was precariously clinging to the moisture vaporator with one hand, reaching out to her with a static-broom in the other. 

"Oh," he said, upon seeing her open eyes. "I—you'd been up here a while. I was going to poke you a bit…down. If that. Um. Works like that. Sorry, are you crying?" 

She flipped back upright and descended to earth, curled up with her knees to her chest, and began to sob. 

* * *

The suns were setting by the time Rey came back inside and sat at the table, her shoulders heavy with purpose and resignation. Ben's presence had not reappeared, no matter how much she had reached out, so she had decided to take matters into her own hands. "I'll look at the datacron," she said softly, and Beaumont handed it to her with as much reverence as he could muster, both hands cradling the crystalline frames. 

"Careful," he reminded her automatically. "It's ancient." 

"It's warm," she said with some surprise as her hands touched it. "Did you leave it in the suns all day?" 

"No," he said, looking baffled. "It's cool to me." 

"Huh," Rey mused, and picked it up completely in one hand, turning it this way and that. It seemed like a light was glowing in the depths, something beating like a heart, and she closed her eyes, probing deeply: there was a way to open this, but she had never learned how. _I'm going to break it,_ she thought, slightly worried. 

_No, you won't._ The voice she knew now was Ben's came to her, still toneless as ever, but still comforting. _You're careful. You have good instincts._

_Oh,_ she thought, somewhat pissed, _so you've decided to come back_ **_now_ ** _, have you?_

He sighed through the Force, warmth that wasn't her spreading along her ribs. _For now. Let's get this open._

_I'm getting it open,_ she reminded him, probing a little deeper. 

_We are. There is no me without you, and no you without me. Reach in further. Think of the Force as a_ _key, not a…what are you doing, a screwdriver_ _? Don't jab_ _at it like that with your mind._

_I'm not jabbin_ _g!_ She mulishly stopped and reassessed her approach anyway, slipping the Force in, thinking of a key, a key to unlock, a key to— 

The datacron sprang to life in her hands, the crystalline panels separating and sliding apart and opening, and a bright golden glow from within spread across the room, illuminating Beaumont's face, drenching the plastered walls in summer, and knowledge streamed into her mind: knowledge without words, without texts: knowledge passed through the Force. 

THERE IS NO DEATH WITHOUT LIFE THERE IS NO LIFE WITHOUT DEATH / HERE BETWEEN THE WORLDS STAND THE DOORS AND THE DOORS STAND BETWEEN THE WORLD ENTIRE /MORTIS CALLS AND SHALL BE ANSWERED / A GREAT IMBALANCE IN THE FORCE RECTIFIED / WITHOUT THE SON THERE CAN BE NO DAUGHTER WITHOUT THE FATHER THERE CAN BE NEITHER 

With a shocking punch of air to her gut, Rey fell backwards to the hard floor, still clutching the datacron, and looked up into Beaumont Kin's fascinated face. "There's—I—" 

"I heard you say it," he told her, waving a sheet of flimsiplast and his stylus around. "I got it all down." 

"Did it mean anything to you?" 

"Yes! I think so. I'll have to dissect the message a little further." He helped her stand, and Rey took her seat shakily, setting the cool datacron aside. "What changed your mind about touching it?" he asked. 

_Don't tell him._ Ben sounded almost sullen, if a toneless voice coming from inside her mind could be described as sullen. 

_Why not?_ she fired back, looking down at her hands. _He ought to know. He can help. He's a professor, you know._

There was a little rumble of dissatisfaction, but then Ben came back. _Never mind. Fine._

"Part of… Ben Solo, you know—" 

"Kylo Ren?" supplied Beaumont. 

"No, Ben Solo. He…you know what happened on Exegol, right?" Rey shifted uncomfortably. 

Beaumont frowned. "Well, yeah. You died from exhaustion after defeating the Emperor, and he brought you back with the Force, then he died from the effort and disappeared." 

"Right, except he's not… _quite_ dead." Rey stood, very aware of a prickle down her spine, and paced. "He's…part of him is in me, in my life-force. We were joined in the Force, two people sharing the power of one—a dyad, and when he channeled his own life force into me, part of him stayed there. I can hear him. He’s sentient, and he’s got a lot of opinions about this whole thing.” 

"So…where's his body?" asked Beaumont. 

"What?" 

"His body. Physically it's gone, vanished into the Force, but you told me you had only seen Skywalker and the General appear as Force-apparitions." Beaumont gestured as if he was in a lecture hall. "We know that Force-masters who don’t leave their bodies behind them when they die—like the General and Skywalker—they vanish into the Force and retain their consciousness, able to appear at will. That's a talent that takes time to master, and if Kylo—ah, Ben, had mastered it, you would have seen him manifest similarly—but you haven't, yet you saw the body vanish." 

"I told you, part of his—soul, or life force, whatever, it's stuck inside me." 

"Right, but the rest of his life force is…where?" 

"One with the Force, like anyone who—who dies, or is alive. The Force moves through everyone’s consciousness.” Rey frowned. “I guess metaphysically it’s all the same.” 

"Right. So it’s with his body. And yet his body has not been—there's no good word for it. Ah. Transfigured, I suppose, into the Force, because he can't appear to you from outside yourself, only from within yourself." Beaumont was pacing now, like a madman. "So if the physical body was not destroyed, it was transported, and the question is to _where_ was it moved." 

"He told me… he told me something pulled away from him, when he—when he died." Rey wiped tears away from her eyes. "Sorry. Um. So if that was his body…" 

"It's been transported to _somewhere_. I'm going to go through the Jedi texts again, maybe see if I can't find a clue—" 

"Wait," said Rey, shaken. "The datacron said—the world and something about doors between them? That sounds like the Chain Worlds Theorem." 

Beaumont clapped a hand to his head. "The Vergence Scatter! Yes! And that would tie in to what the datacron said about Mortis and their gods—the Father, the Daughter, and the Son." 

"What do gods that have to do with the Chain Worlds Theorem?" 

"According to legend, the plane—the World between the Worlds—can be accessed from a painting of the Mortis gods at the Jedi temple on Lothal." Beaumont raced to her texts, stacked on a shelf, and carefully opened an ancient tome, pointing to a diagram of circles on circles and lines connecting them. "Here, see—this is Lothal, and there are other openings, other doorways: you can theoretically travel to other places and times once inside the Vergence—" 

"Lothal? That's not far at all. Let's go!" Hope bubbled up in Rey, and to match it, exhilarated excitement from the remnant of Ben still curling around her heart. "We could make it there in no time: I can get the Falcon fired up now—" 

"Rey," said Beaumont, face full of pity. "The Jedi temple on Lothal was destroyed." 

"Destroyed," she repeated blankly, paused on one foot. "When?" 

Beaumont gnawed on the inside of his cheek. "A long time ago. During the Clone Wars, or just after, I think. It's only ruins now." 

Despair flooded Rey, not all of it hers. "It's our only hope," she said. "There's not another way in?" 

"No." Beaumont set the book aside. "I'm sorry, Rey." 

"I—" She stood, almost knocking over the datacron. "I have to go and—think about this. Just. I'm sorry." 

"I can… look for other options?" asked Beaumont hesitantly. "If that's—" 

"Yes. Please." She scrubbed a hand through the dirt on her face and rushed from the room, into the harsh sunlight of the courtyard, leaving him sitting there with an ancient holocron and book, alone. 


	4. lothal

Rey stood in front of the mirror in the fresher, blindly staring at herself. The reflection wasn't recognizable: she'd lost a couple of kilos, she was filthy, her eyes had dark circles beneath them, and her clothing was disheveled and torn and sand-stained. _I look like I did on_ _Jakku_ _after a hard season,_ she thought, uncomfortable a she averted her eyes. 

_You look terrible,_ said Ben from the back of her mind. He wasn't as jarring now that she'd had time to acclimate to his presence, but it was still strange to share her mind with a second person. _When did you last sleep?_

"Probably around the last time I showered," she muttered, looking back at the mirror. 

_It's strange. Seeing you through your own eyes. I wonder…_ There was the smallest shift, and suddenly Rey was looking into a mirror at Ben Solo's face, superimposed over her own in a bizarre, half-there image, like a bad holocam broadcast. 

"R'iia's _tits,_ " she spat, backing away in horror. The image in the mirror resolved back to her own features, and she whirled away. "Don't do that!" 

_Sorry._ A gentle shiver worked its way down her back, and she frowned. 

"Is that you, too?" 

_Yes. I'm trying to be comforting. Is it_ _…_ _not working?_

"No!" She slapped at her back, wriggling away. "I feel like something's crawling down my shirt!" 

_Oh._ A small pause, then he spoke again. _What about this?_ There was nothing for a moment, and Rey frowned, then gasped audibly as she felt the unmistakable sensation of a large hand splayed out against the back of her neck. It was so strong that she reached up to grasp it, but felt nothing under her fingers. 

"What _is_ that?" she said, trembling. 

_Me. I can—influence your nervous system. A little._ _Sorry. Is it bad?_

"Not… bad, exactly. Just strange." 

_Oh. I don't know what the limits of this…thing… are._ The unseen hand withdrew. Rey slumped down to the floor and shuddered, her hands buried in her shut eyes, trying to find inner peace. Ben Solo, living inside her: Ben Solo trapped without his own body, sharing hers—it was a horrifying prospect. She couldn't live out the rest of her life like this, and neither could he, or what was left of him: it would drive them both up the wall. 

"I want to go to Lothal anyway," she said after a minute, knees drawn up to her chest. "Even if it's a dead end. There has to be something we can do." 

There was a gentle rumble of acceptance somewhere in the back of her mind, distinctly Ben-flavored. _All right._

* * *

Lothal was a grassy, mountainous planet with plains and marshes that the Falcon skimmed above like a stone over water. Beaumont sat in the copilot's seat, clinging to his knapsack like a life preserver as Rey expertly piloted over the hills and grasslands. Of course, it wasn't just _her_ piloting. _Watch out for the compressor, it gets touchy._

"I know it does," Rey muttered under her breath as she flicked a dampener on and tugged the yoke. "I _have_ flown the Falcon before." 

Beaumont gave her a sidelong look. "He's… backseat piloting, isn't he?" 

"Oh, he sure is," Rey said cheerfully, swinging the ship around over a large rock formation. "Where's those temple ruins?" 

"Straight ahead, a couple more klicks." Beaumont double-checked the ancient map spread out over his lap. "You should see a few ringed mountains and a big pile of rock." 

"Got it." Rey kept her eyes open, doing her best to ignore Ben's protests.

_I am not backseat piloting. I'm piloting. It's not my fault I don't have a body_ _of my own_ _._

She ignored Beaumont's expression. "You are in the back of _my_ head, telling me how to pilot _my_ ship, so yes, you are backseat piloting." 

_Your mind_ _is technically part of me, like mine is part of you._ _We're a dyad in the—_

"I don't care what we are right now. This is _not_ your _body_ ," Rey snapped, and turned to the doctor, cheeks flushed. "Sorry, Beaumont—" 

He held his hands up. "No, no, it's fine! Seriously, very fascinating, um, study on dyadic nature and, um—" 

Rey turned away, mortified, and saw a pile of rubble at exactly twelve o'clock through the windscreen. "Hey! There's the remains of the temple. I'll put her down on that plain. We can walk." 

* * *

The trek to the crumbling temple ruins was not very long, and it gave Rey a chance to breathe and work out some of the tension gathering in her muscle as she trudged alongside Beaumont Kin, who muttered occasionally and looked down at his maps and documents. She felt tired, worn out, but more alive and purposeful than she had felt in months, more purposeful than she'd felt since… 

_Are we ever going to talk about…that?_

"Not _now,_ " she hissed under her breath. "Kin's right there. I don't want half the Resistance knowing we—" 

_Kissed? Why?_ A reeling little tendril of hurt and confusion curled tightly around her belly, and she tried to shake it off. 

"Because—" She couldn't bring herself to say it, so she just thought it instead. _Because I felt like a widow after I left_ _Exegol_ _, which is ridiculous because I—I've never even been wedded_ _or anything but you were my first kiss and I couldn't, I couldn't do anything once I saw you dissolve into nothing under my hands—it was like half of me died and I was walking around pretending nothing happened, nothing happened, big stupid smile and pretending I was a Skywalker and pretending I was_ **_happy_ ** _—_

"Rey?" Beaumont sounded concerned, and Rey looked up, baffled, to notice tears were blurring her vision. "You okay?" 

"Yes, I'm—" She choked herself off, scrubbing a sleeve across her face. "No. I'm not. But I will be once we just—get to this temple and find whatever we can." 

"Okay. The sun's getting low. Not too safe to be out here at night.” 

* * *

Dusk was falling as Rey and Beaumont reached the towering ruins. Stone crumbled into stone, the ground torn and eroded, and Beaumont was thrilled at the archaeological discoveries to be had, clambering over rocks and making notes—Rey sat despondently on a pile of old rock, alone, legs crossed and her rucksack in her lap. 

_Don’t give up hope,_ entreated Ben’s voice. _Rey. Don’t give up._

Wordlessly, she pulled out a large swath of black fabric from her bag, fingers trembling as she turned it over and over, looking at it. “Do you remember this?” she asked, voice shaking. 

_I do._

Her fingers turned it over, finding the seams, the little rough lines where she had painstakingly stitched the holes burned into it. “I don’t know if you can feel this. I mended it for you. I thought… I thought there might be a way to bring you back, at first, and… after that, I just left it alone. In a box. Hidden away.” Tears threatened to choke her voice, blur her vision. “It was for nothing.” 

_It wasn’t for nothing._

“Um, Rey?” Beaumont sounded vaguely worried, and she stood up, stuffing the shirt half into her bag as she looked down at him. 

“What is it?” 

He pointed with a shaking finger. “Big. Um. Wolf. _Big wolf. Behind you.”_

Rey turned, very slowly, and stared up into the face of the biggest canid she had ever seen in her life: hot breath and white fur, markings on the face, seemingly the size of a troop transport, with jaws big enough to lock around both her and Beaumont simultaneously, and she had just enough time to think _what have I done_ before the beast advanced, one huge paw spreading out with the weight of it into the rubble. 

_YOU H_ _OLD_ _SOMETHING DEAR TO YOU._ _SHOW ME._

Rey gulped. The words had come from the animal, not from its mouth, but from the Force. Talking wolves that could use the Force and a destroyed temple: what kind of a nightmare had she wandered into? “I don’t—oh, you mean—” and she pulled out the soft black shirt, holding it up at the wolf with shaking hands. 

Ben had seemingly gone AWOL in the space between her terror and the wolf’s words, but that was just as well: she didn’t need to focus on anything but those enormous teeth. _YES. THIS IS THE THING._ The huge nostrils flared and sniffed at the cloth; the head bent down. _YOU HAVE COME TO SEEK HE WHO LIES IN THE WORLD BETWEEN WORLDS._

“Yes,” whispered Rey. “I don’t know how to get in. The door has been destroyed.” 

_NO TRUE DOOR CAN BE DESTROYED. IT CAN ONLY BE OBSCURED FOR A WHILE._ The great head bent closer, and she saw the creature’s great golden eyes, looking into hers. _JUST AS DEATH CANNOT DESTROY THE BOND BETWEEN TWO HALVES OF A_ _WHOLE_ _._

Rey fell to her knees, unable to speak as tears brimmed over and fell down her cheeks. _Please,_ she thought desperately, _please help me. Please. I can’t do this alone._

The wolf lowered its head down to hers, hot breath washing over her body, and sighed. _YOU WILL FIND THE DOOR YOU SEEK WHERE YOU LOST THE THING YOU MOST LOVED._

“Exegol,” Rey whispered, chills spreading up her spine. “Please, no. Anywhere else. Not Exegol.” But the wolf was already turning and sauntering away in the twilight, and Rey sucked in a breath of air, sinking to her knees as Beaumont shouted, clambering toward her, hot denial coursing through her. 

_Not_ _Exegol_ _. Not_ _Exegol_ _. Please._ _Anything else._

_Anything but_ _Exegol_ _._


	5. scatter

Beaumont’s papers and documents were spread out on the  dejarik table as they streaked through hyperspace : a veritable mountain of papers and dusty books, notes on  flimsiplast , notes drawn by hand or typed out in  Aurebesh . “I hope they’re enough,” he kept repeating, digging more out of his bag. 

“It’s all right. The Resistance needs you, and I—I have to do this alone,” Rey told him, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of instant  caf . The powdered mix  tasted like it  had probably been on the ship since the days of the Empire, but it was a hot stimulant and she sorely needed something to keep her exhaustion and fear at bay as she pored over the documents . “You tell everyone I said hello, okay?”

“I will. You can still find your way to  Exegol , right?”

“Yeah. The signals I dropped on my way in should still be going strong. Scanner will pick them up.” Rey gulped a little at the thought of returning through that miasma of scarlet gas and lightning. “We—I’ll be fine.” She mentally kicked herself at the unintentional plural: Ben had gone quiet inside her mind since the appearance of the Loth-wolf, and she found herself oddly missing his voice. 

“Okay. I’ll take my ship back once we get back to Tatooine.” He grasped her shoulder gently. “You need anything at all, you comm us. I mean it, Rey. Anything.”

“Can you—please don’t tell anyone I have Ben Solo living in my head?” she asked, wincing. “It’s just weird, and nobody’s going to understand it.”

“I barely understand it. But sure. Will do.” He saluted and headed back up the corridor to the cockpit, leaving Rey alone with most of his research. 

She sat and stared. There was the hand-drawn diagram of the Vergence Scatter, labeled in fading handwriting on ancient parchment: doors to another plane of existence in the Force, but  _ where? _ “ Exegol ,” she muttered, tracing the circle with a finger. It gave her chills to even think about returning there: the whole place was cursed as far as she cared, but if there was the slightest chance of getting Ben back… 

_ I have to do it, _ she thought, determined and slightly nauseated. There was no other way, no other door. If the Loth-wolf had said she had to go to the place where she had lost the thing she had loved the most, then she must go to  Exegol , where she had lost her life and her other half, her—

_ Rey. _

“You’re awake?” she gasped, forgetting the parchment as she jerked to her feet and felt her own body, as if frightened she’d lost a limb without knowing. “Are you all right?”

_ Yes. I think. _ There was a stirring behind her breastbone: her heart rate had picked up a little.  _ You were afraid. What were you frightened of? _

“We have to go back to  Exegol , because a giant wolf told me so, and yes, I know that sounds absolutely mad, but—”

_ A Loth-wolf _ _. _ _ They’re very wise and strong with the Force.  _

She frowned.  “You were awake?”

_ Yes. I think… It felt like a trance. Like I was dreaming. I couldn’t exactly function… well, I can’t function like this anyway, but my consciousness was cut away for a few hours. I didn’t care for it. _

“Sorry.” Rey patted her own shoulder. “I hope you can feel that.”

_ A little. In the sense that someone’s thumping on the roof of the house I’m in. _ There was a tone of faint humor in his voice. _ You’re afraid to go back there. _

“Of course I am.” She frowned and tucked her chin into her hands, looking at the papers.  “Aren’t you?”

_ Not really.  _ _ It’s only a place of ash and ghosts now. Besides, it was the last place I saw you. _

Tears came to Rey’s eyes at the memory. “And it was the place I saw you die—well, not die,  but—you know.”

_ It’s also the place you died,  _ he reminded her.  _ I can understand your reluctance. _

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Rey told him brusquely, turning over a page scribbled with notes. “And I’d really appreciate it if you—” Her words fell silent, forgotten as she stared at a tiny annotation by a circular symbol, one of the circles connected with lines and marks in the sketch of the Chain Worlds:  _ Ahch _ _ -To. _

_ You’ve seen that door before, _ he said.

“Yes. I don’t—I don’t think it can be entered from outside.” She tried to push away the memory: the Dark Side, the cave, the lake beneath the island. “And I don’t think it can be trusted. We’ll just have to go to  Exegol , you and me, and if—if something horrible happens, at least I know I tried.”

* * *

After dropping Beaumont off on Tatooine, Rey took the controls of the Falcon and set a course for the Unknown Regions, leaving the navigation to the ship’s computer. Above all else, she desperately needed more  caf , and maybe to sit alone and obsess over the manuscripts and books a little more. Kin had given her everything  she needed, but if there was a chance anything malevolent  was waiting for her on  Exegol , she had to be prepared.

_ Rey. _

She ignored the voice, tromping back to the galley and rummaging for more instant  caf packets. There had to be more back here, right?

_ Rey. You need to rest. _

“No, I don’t,” she muttered, digging into a dusty box. Anything to  keep her awake, alert, so nothing could invade her mind while her guard was down—

_ Rey. _ A hand, invisible and gentle, pressed lightly against her arm, as if tapping.  _ You need rest and food and sleep. And a shower. _

“I do not,” she spat, hackles raised. “I’ll thank you to keep your opinion of my—”

The hand shifted.  _ It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. You won’t be able to protect yourself if you’re exhausted. _

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered, a sob catching in her throat. “Please. I’m so—I just want—”

_ To be left alone. I understand. _ The touch withdrew, and Ben’s presence dimmed slightly. 

“No,” Rey said quickly, clutching at her arm. “Wait. Don’t go. Come back. I don’t want to be alone.”

_ I’m here. Always. I won’t _ _ leave you, Rey. _ _ You’re not alone. _

* * *

The trip to the fresher was halting and dragging, Rey be ing coaxed every step of the way by Ben’s voice. Once inside, she made him promise not to look as she stripped down (even though he informed her technically he couldn’t  _ see _ ) and edged into the ancient shower, turning the water as hot as it could go and standing there as grime and filth sloughed off her back and arms and went down the drain to the reclaiming system. 

Her legs and feet looked so narrow, so painfully starved down: Rey couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten a full meal. Her hipbones jutted out like spurs on two sides of the canyon that her abdomen had become, and her ribs stood out in relief.  _ I look like I did on  _ _ Jakku _ _ , _ she thought, tears coming to her eyes again. How had she regressed to this?  _ I was strong once. I was going to be a Jedi.  _ That all seemed like eons ago, like a story she had heard once about someone else.  Mechanically, she washed herself down with the antibacterial soap in the fresher: it was probably as ancient as the food, but the sharp smell stung her nose and kept her awake as more dirt pooled away. 

_ You’re still strong, _ said Ben, and she jumped, pressing herself to the shower wall.  _ That’s cold.  _

“You scared me.” She dragged a wet hand down her face, swiping the water from it. “Please don’t look at me when I’m naked.”

_ I can’t exactly just leave your body, clothed or not _ _. And I can’t see you.  _ He sounded vaguely perturbed, if that was possible to work out from a toneless voice.  _ Trust me. If I could just… zap myself into the light fixture, I would. _ _ This water is too hot.  _

“Too hot for  _ you, _ maybe,” she shot back, fiddling with the knob anyway. “How’s that?”

_ Better. Thank you.  _ There was an odd sensation as if something warm was washing across her, and he spoke again.  _ That pain in your knee, has that been there long? _

“I twisted it or something a couple weeks back at the farm,” she said, frowning, but the crease in her brow smoothed out as relief washed over her leg. “Hey. Was that—”

_ Me. Sorry. I just figured someone’s got to run maintenance on you, if you won’t do it. _

“Are you getting clever with me?” she demanded, rubbing soap across her torso again with more force. Really, the  sheer  number of layers of cooled, sweaty grime she’d accumulated were approaching pitiful levels. “After all I’m—”

_ What… what’s that? _

“What’s what?” she asked, her hands frozen on her chest.

_ You’re doing something with your hands. It… feels nice.  _ A tentative little sensation of a poke near her collarbone alerted her to the general area her hands were in, and she flushed with heat, dropping her soapy, dirty hands from her chest at once. 

“Stop  _ touching _ my—my—”

_ Your—oh. Oh. I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—it’s not, not, I didn’t— _

She brought her arms up to cover her chest and shut her eyes in mortification. “This is why I didn’t want you looking! ” 

_ I’m not looking. I’m feeling! _ The sensation withdrew.

“That  _ counts!” _ Rey held her hands out at arms’ length, not touching a single inch of her exposed body. 

_ I can’t not feel you, Rey; not any more than you can shut off your own nervous system. I’m sorry. _

“Ugh,” she grumbled. “We need ground rules for this trip. Several ground rules. You don’t talk to me or—do the touching thing, while I’m—using the fresher. Or showering.”

A coil of confusion wrapped around her: a muddle of thoughts and memories dredged to the surface. Her face, swimming in a blue, cold haze, coming towards her. Her mouth, pressing hard to—oh, wait, these were  _ his _ memories. He was remembering the kiss, all softness even as his face went numb and his vision blacked out and she felt the way his mouth had curved for one last smile before all the strength had left him, and—

“Stop,” Rey gasped, shaken. 

_ I’m sorry. I thought… I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it.  _

“I want to talk about it,” she said aloud, looking at the walls of the fresher. “I want to. But I want to talk about it… with  _ you _ , in your body, looking at me from outside, not with you in my head where I feel like I’m talking to myself.”

_ Oh. _ There was nothing more after that, his presence withdrawing, and Rey finished washing herself in silence, trying to keep her thoughts to a minimum. How would she feel if it was the other way around, and she was trapped in Ben’s body, unable to stop feeling everything he felt, or reading his thoughts? _ You’d dislike it. _

“Oi!”

_ Sorry. _

Rey finished up and stepped out, pointedly not looking at herself in the mirror as she dressed in loose, clean clothes, the only ones she  could find —a shirt, a pair of old soft pants , a moderately  dirt-free pair of ancient socks. She hadn’t meant to spend so long on  Jakku : it just—well, it had turned into an extended stay, and her few extra clothes had been repurposed or scrapped or used up. She’d forgotten how it felt to wear clothes that weren’t stiff with old sweat and rank with body odor. 

Ben didn’t say anything for another twenty minutes, not until she had gone back to the galley and downed a cup of water, then another, then toasted herself a slice of bread in the micro-oven.  _ Smells good _ .

“ I wonder if you can taste things I eat,” she said, taking a bite of the toast.

_ I can. That instant  _ _ caf _ _ was terrible. The toast isn’t bad, though. How much longer until we reach the Unknown Regions? _

“Maybe an hour or two. Time for more studying.”

_ You need a nap. _

Rey bristled. “I do not. I need—”

_ Rey. You need rest. Please.  _ A tentative little touch, like a pair of fingers, cupped the back of her neck, and Rey found herself almost in tears again at the memory of his hand, caressing her neck as she sat up, staring, unable to believe he’d come back—

“Fine,” she muttered , scrubbing her eyes dry . A headache was starting its onslaught at her temples, and if she didn’t sit down in a dark place somewhere, she was sure it would be a full-blown migraine by the time she reached the Unknown Regions. 

* * *

The sleeping quarters were dark and cool, the hum of the ship singing her to sleep as Rey curled up on the bed.  Now that she wasn’t being constantly stimulated at every turn, she could be alone with her thoughts—well, her thoughts and Ben’s thoughts, but as alone as she could be, under the circumstances—and just…meditate.

_ Be with me. Be with me.  _

She wasn’t sure if the mantra belonged to her or to Ben, but she focused on it, allowing her inner self to unfold like a flower in the sunlight, and let thoughts come and go, pass over her. In and out, in and out.  _ I will go to  _ _ Exegol _ _. I will face the fear there.  _ _ Palpatine is dead. He’s dead…and he can’t come back, but if Ben can come back what’s to stop him from returning, too? What if it’s a trap, this doorway—what if— _

_ Rey. It’s safe. It’s all right. I’ll be with you. _

She shut her eyes as the pent-up weariness of the past weeks finally overtook her, and drifted into sleep, thinking about  Exegol , thinking about Ben.

In her dreams, she was trying to get a  datacron to help her find Ben, but it ke pt switching locations: first Tatooine, then Baatu , then  Hosnian Prime, destroyed in the attack. She couldn’t get anyone on comms, not Poe or Finn or Beaumont, not anyone, and the finality of death loomed before her, as ancient and dry as the desert, and before she knew it she was back on  Jakku , watching a transport shrink into the sky overhead.  _ Don’t leave me! No! Come back! _

A presence gently stirred, and the image changed: instead of a dry desert, she found herself standing in lush greenery:  Takodana , by the lake , and the sun was shining down on her. It changed to a dream where she was sitting with Han, and Leia, and Finn: her friends, the people she cared about most, and when she woke up an hour later to the sound of the Falcon’s computer alerting her to a hyperspace drop, she was rested and calm, and did not remember her dream.


	6. home

The trip back to the surface of  Exegol was a gut-wrenching trip, even with the old navigation marks to light her way in. Rey clung to the yoke, jerking the Falcon from side to side in clouds of scarlet gas and lightning. Ben remained a quiet presence, still and silent in her mind, as if he was afraid to make a sound in the face of her piloting. It was a reprieve, but not a very welcome one. She had gotten almost used to his constant remarks dryly popping up in the back of her head.  Rey brought the shuttle down to land on the vast expanse of dry, cracked earth, spread out beneath the looming, ancient  Sith temple. No wind stirred the air, no dust blew about: this was a dark, dead world, bereft of  even  the shambling imitation of life thrust upon it when Palpatine had inhabited the temple. Rey pressed the door switch, letting the Falcon’s ramp slip down into the desiccated  ground , and hovered at the top , peering out into the darkness. “I can’t do this,” she said aloud.

_ I’m here, _ Ben said, as immediately as if  she had  called him .  _ I’ll be with you. _

She took a deep breath and stepped down, knapsack over her shoulder as she walked down the ramp and  strode out toward the monolithic structure, looming darkly overhead with a gap beneath. An ancient model TIE fighter was sitting off to the right, far away in the gloom. She had seen it on her way out when she had been here last, and  she  had vaguely realized through the whirlpool of emotions that had threatened to drown her then that it must have been Ben’s transport here. It still waited patiently for its last pilot to return , there on the  black, sterile earth .

Further she went, deep into the  shadow. Once she was standing on the circular lift-platform, the whole thing shuddered and shook to life, lowering her down, down into the cavern beneath. She stood, every muscle tense, as the gigantic, ancient statues of long-dead, crumbling  Sith lords looked down at her. They were not visible in the darkness, but she could sense them, almost as if they were sentient, malevolent forces.

_ They’re not alive, _ Ben said. He seemed to be thrumming with frantic eagerness, pressing against her sternum and belly in quick little movements.  _ It’s close. The door. _ _ I can sense it. _

“Calm down,” Rey said quietly, and he stilled as the lift platform ground to a halt, deep in the heart of the planet. “Do I have to go back to the throne room?”

_ I think… close by. Somewhere. Not sure just where. _

“Great,” she muttered, and began her trek back to the ruined arena, the bluish light from some unknown source far above casting everything in a cold, unearthly glow as she stepped back into the place where it had all ended. Here were the twisted shards of obsidian that marked the remains of the throne: here were the cracks in the ground, here were the footprints she had left on her way out—

A lump swelled in her throat. She could see them all now, undisturbed by wind or time: the marks where her body had lain in the dust, the dragging lines from the edge of the pit where Ben had pulled himself toward her form, foot by agonizing foot. “You had a rough time, huh?” she asked, choking slightly.

_ It's all right.  _

She tore her eyes away from the footprints and looked up and around. A door. What kind of door was she looking for? “How do I even find that door?”

_ How did you find the one on  _ _ Ahch _ _ -To? _

“I answered the call to the… dark side,” she replied, half-stubbornly. “I’m  _ not _ opening myself to the dark side here.”

_ I don’t think it can hurt you anymore. Not here. Everything here is dead. _

“I’m still not doing it. There’s got to be another way.” She steadily ignored the pull in the Force that felt like—well, it felt like she was a lodestone, like a magnet was yanking all the feeling in her body over to the left and ahead. 

_ I feel that. You should follow it. _

She took a step. “If this ends in me getting possessed—” Another step, and another. 

_ It won’t. I can sense it. There’s something past that column… _

Rey walked around to the back of the throne, past the anteroom, and between a pair of columns that  were carved with ancient  Sith runes. Beyond that, only darkness, until she activated her saber, and yellow light drenched the space. It was not the yellow-red light of a summer day, and it was not warm, but it flooded the place in a pale gold glow that chased off the shadows, letting her see an enormous mural carved from stone on a flat wall, a mural that seemed to be pyramid-shaped, and the pyramid was covered in grotesque human faces, animals, symbols and runes that reeked of the Dark.

“This is it,” she whispered, trembling. “How do I open it?”

_ I don’t know. _

Well, that was helpful. Rey walked closer. It almost seemed like she could hear whispering coming from inside the wall, as if the smooth black stone was alive with souls. Tentatively, she pressed a finger to it. When nothing world-shaking happened, she pressed her palm to it, then the other.  _ I answered the call, _ she thought desperately , pressing her forehead against it. It would do her no good to cling to the wall in fear: she might as well embrace her quest and give in. _ Even to the Dark Side, I will answer, if you’ll just let me get him back.  _ _ Let me in _ _ ,  _ she thought.  _ Let me in. Let me in… _

The Force surged, and Rey gasped as the stone shifted, twisting under her fingers and face. She jerked back in surprise as the carvings revolved and pulled and crumbled away, the outer lines of the pyramid  glowing with white light, and where the carvings had pulled back, she saw only a black, depthless void, crossed with white lines and circles , pathways and stars.

_ HERE BETWEEN THE WORLDS STAND THE DOORS _ _ , _ _ AND THE DOORS STAND BETWEEN THE WORLD ENTIRE. _

She took a breath, small and careful, and stepped over the threshold to the World between the Worlds.

* * *

The floor was smooth and black, without a single flaw, but every step she took made small pale ripples, like she walked in an inch of glowing water. Rey made sure to keep the triangular doorway back to  Exegol in view as she moved further into the strange place. It would not do to become lost in this void. Whispers swept across her ears, whispers of people long dead and people not yet born.  _ When I grow up, I will be a Jedi Knight… come back, come back… Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter… I waited for you, where did you go?... Mom! Don’t worry!... I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me…you’re breaking my heart…stay here, sweetheart. I’ll come back for you. I promise… _

“Ben,”  Rey whispered, half-terrified he had left her. 

_ I’m here. _ He seemed subdued, as she was by this strange place. 

“Where are you, in here?”

_ I _ _ … _ _ don’t know.  _

“Really helpful, thanks,” she muttered , looking around. Nobody else was in here, at least not physically, and she kept walking, peering at other round doors, seeing where they led. Some planets she did not recognize, or had never been to. Others were shut, only more  starfields in their place. The path she was on seemed to curve upward, but there was no sense of gravity or stress on her legs as she walked: the World between Worlds was a n endless  void where laws of physics made no sense . Ben’s body could be anywhere, anywhere at all. 

She passed a circular door with something familiar about it and stopped to look. The space that stretched from white boundary to boundary was flat black obsidian, and she stepped closer, curious. Something was on the other side, blurred and faint in the semi-transparent stone. Something was moving in the dark. 

_ Show me… my parents… please… _

Rey placed her hand on the stone, fingers shaking, as the stone’s opacity cleared, like fog off a mirror, and revealed  _ her _ : herself in wet clothes, her hair half-down, staring into her own reflection. She shouted in fear and fell backward, the stone immediately turning back to smooth blackness as she landed on her side, scrambling away from the door as fast as she could.  _ Why are you here, Rey from nowhere?  _

“I don’t want to see that,” she panted, wrenching herself back upright and turning away. Chills ran up and down her body, and even though the World between Worlds seemed to be a fairly middling temperature, she couldn’t stop shivering. So these were doors through  _ time _ as well as space: Kin would have a field day. “Ben! Ben, where are you?”

No answer came from the void. Rey set her jaw and kept walking, always keeping her eye on the door to  Exegol . 

* * *

It seemed ages later when Rey reached the top of a path that defied gravity and turned to a new circular plane, ringed by doors, and in the middle of that wide space she saw something on the floor. At first, she thought it was a statue: it was white, unclothed, and shaped like a person, and as she drew closer she realized it was a body, and as she got even closer she realized she knew who it was. “Ben?” she gasped, scrambling closer and dropping to her knees, frantic with worry. He was still and silent as a corpse as she rolled him over (not an easy feat) and he looked almost exactly as he had when he had vanished before her eyes. His bruises were fresh, still blooming crimson on his skin, the blood still shining red and wet, and she could sense that his leg was still broken, but it was him, it was  _ him, him, him, _ and he was solid and real.

_ In! In! Let me in! _ The part of Ben’s spirit that lived inside her had seemed to lose all rational thought as time had gone on in the World, and now it was pulling her closer to the body, desperate to be reunited with its form. Rey pulled Ben’s body close, tears dripping down her nose as she cradled him in her arms. “I’m here,” she sobbed, rocking him, not caring that he was completely nude and filthy, not caring that she was so tired she could barely think. “Ben. I’m here. It’s going to be all right.” She pressed her hand to his chest, drawing in a deep breath and letting her shoulders drop as she concentrated, her sobs stilling.  _ The Force. Draw it to you. Let him take back what was lost. Breathe. Just breathe. Let him be with me.  _ It felt as if something was burning cold on her arm, trickling out of her body and flowing into his: something was leaching out, filling up, swelling, healing—

Ben’s closed eyes flickered, the lashes moving slightly , and something that had been missing snapped back into place with such suddenness that she jolted. Rey stopped, her vision gone fuzzy and black at the edges as sudden weakness flooded her: that must have been a lot more energy than she’d thought she’d put into him. She wanted to say his name, but her mouth felt slow and fuzzy.  _ I’m here, _ she thought instead, bleary and desperate as she clung to his enormous body.  _ Here. Here. _

His eyes opened, fluttering, and he slowly sat up, as if he’d forgotten how, before looking at her with wondering eyes . “Rey,” he whispered, searching her face.

Oh, she wanted to kiss him, smother him, cling to him and never let go. “No time,” she managed, swaying where she sat. “Got to… go. Back. You… remember?”

“Rey,” he said again, one huge hand coming up to catch at her face. The blunt, thick fingers were trembling, and his lips parted as he breathed. “It… doesn’t hurt. Did you  _ kiss _ me?”

“Oh, just—” She half-smiled, vaguely aware of her body losing strength as she clung to him, and thought,  _ maybe this would be an okay place to die. _ “Remember. The trip?”

“Like a dream,” he said softly, blinking. “I was… you. On the Falcon. We were looking for something…”

“I was looking for the door to get here. We have to get out of this place.” Rey found she couldn’t quite stand, her knees gone to water. “Too much… I tried to put you back into yourself. I’m. I’m so tired.”

“Don’t try to stand up,” he said, clambering ungracefully to his feet. He looked down at himself, at his hands and arms, and suddenly realized he was naked. “Oh. Huh. That…” He turned red, flushing across the bridge of his nose, and covered his groin with one huge hand. 

“I have your clothes here,” she said weakly, patting her knapsack.  “Not… shoes. Forgot.”

He shook his head. “Priorities. We need to get you to a  medcenter . Let’s go. I can change once we’re back on… were we on  Exegol again?”

“Yes.” She swayed slightly, and he bent down to catch her, then lifted her up,  slinging her across his shoulder like she weighed nothing. “You don’t know the way back…”

“I was in your head. It’s like… remembering a dream.” Ben  took a step forward , then another, and she buried her face in his filthy shoulder. He smelled like blood and sweat and iron and  _ life _ _ ; _ __ he was alive, alive, alive. “Hold on. Stay with me. We’ll make it out. Just keep breathing. Hold on. ”  She sucked in a breath and made her feet move, her vision splintering into stars, and together they  limped away.

* * *

“We’re lost,” Rey managed to groan out what seemed eons later, as Ben set her down carefully and looked from side to side. “None of this… is familiar…”

“We’re not lost,” he assured her. “It’s somewhere close by. I know it is. I can feel it.”

“I took my eye off it,” she muttered, closing her eyes. She was so, so tired. “Lost it…”

“Rey, wake up. Stay with me.” He cupped the back of her neck, and oh, how she had missed his presence, but there was no time to think about that now. “Stay  _ with  _ me, Rey. I’m not losing you again. Let me use the Force—I can give you some energy—”

“You do that and we’ll be right back where we started,” she panted, eyes shutting in spite of herself. Voices drifted above her, around her: voices past and present and future, and Ben cradled her gently, clutching her to his chest. “Just go. The Falcon… she’s waiting, it’s… all right. You’ll find it.”

“I’m not leaving you here,”  Ben murmured , rocking her a little. “I’m not. Hold on. We’ll find a way—”

“Hello, there,” said a gentle, Coruscanti-accented voice, and Rey’s eyes slid past Ben’s dark, pained ones to a figure outlined in blue, not ghostly or transparent here in this plane, but solid and real.  _ Luke, _ she thought for a moment, but rescinded it: this wasn’t Luke. He was younger, and more composed: hair shorter, beard trimmed neatly, and besides, his voice was all wrong. “Perhaps we might be of some assistance.”

Ben turned, and Rey swallowed, her throat feeling as dry as a desert. “I don’t know who you are,” he confessed, eyes tracking across the Jedi robes, the colors of sand and earth. 

“That’s  all right , Ben. We never met, but I’m your namesake. Perhaps, if I had lived longer , I would have been a sort of godfather.” He smiled, and it reached his gentle eyes.  “I was something of the sort to your uncle.”

“Kenobi,” said Ben, in a voice brimming with emotion, and the man nodded. “You can help her?”

“We can help you both,” said another voice, and Rey looked over again: this was another young man who reminded her of Ben, with a scar through his right eye—but his hair was light brown, not black. “The Force moves through this place like a traffic jam on Cor uscant . It’s uneven, intemperate.”

“As you were once too, my friend,” said Kenobi wryly.

“Very funny, Master.”

“Grandfather,” said Ben, and tears filled his eyes. “My mother—my uncle—”

“They’re coming,” said Anakin Skywalker, his eyes as full of emotion as his grandson’s. “I promise you.”

“You didn’t come to me,” whispered Ben, smudging tears and filth off his face with a bare shoulder. “I fell, and I was  _ climbing, _ and nobody came, nobody came to help—”

“You never needed our help,” said Kenobi gently. “You were always full of light, full of the Force, strong despite all that had happened to you—what more could we do for a man who clawed his way out of a pit barehanded to save the woman he loved?”

“I heard your voices,” whispered Rey, half-conscious. “I heard you say these were my last steps.”

“Yes, Rey. Your last steps.” Kenobi rested a blue-edged hand on her brow, and he felt cool, solid and real. “But not your last breaths, not today.”

Anakin placed his own hands on Ben’s shoulders, and Ben straightened up as Rey felt the Force seep into him, flowing, gently—and through him, into her. “ Reach out,” instructed Kenobi, one hand on Rey and the other on Ben’s arm. “Feel the Force. Let it in.”

Ben shuddered, gasping in a great breath, and to Rey for a moment it seemed he was shining with white light, like the pathways and doors in the world they were in—but it faded, and she felt life leach back in, strengthening her body. She sat up, feeling as if she’d just woken up from a very long nap, and opened her mouth to thank the two Jedi—but they had gone, and it was only her, and Ben.

_ The Force will be with you,  _ said a voice she knew well.

_ Always, _ said another she knew even better.

Ben turned, still clutching her, and she saw Luke and Leia, young and full of life, standing together on the black floor, their feet making not a single ripple. “Mother,” he whispered, shaking. 

“Son,” she said warmly, and crossed to him, kneeling and embracing both Rey and Ben. It lasted for a moment, and then she leaned away and tugged on his large ear sharply. 

“Ow,” he said.

“If you ever pull anything like that again, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life,” she said , and kissed the top of his head. 

“We can guide you to the way out,” said Luke, coming to stand by his sister. “You’ll have to hurry. The strain on  Exegol’s structure caused by the Force keeping the door open will collapse the whole temple soon.”

“Pants,” said Ben, as if remembering he was naked. “I need to—”

“No time for pants,” said Rey, slinging her bag back over her shoulder. “You can have your pants once  we’re safely out of here.”

“Follow us,” said Leia, and all four of them headed off, off toward the distant rumble coming through one of the myriad doors. Rey clung to her bag with both hands, half-afraid if she didn’t, she’d grab Ben, and that if she grabbed Ben, she’d never let go of him.

* * *

They reached the triangular door back through to  Exegol , and Rey paused on the cracking threshold , Ben on her heels . “Luke,” she said quietly. “Leia. I never got to say goodbye to either of you, not even…”

“It’s never goodbye, not really.” Leia smiled gently. “Do me a favor. Go back to Tatooine when you have a moment and get those sabers out of the sand. You’ll need them.”

“And you two take care of each other,” Luke told them.  “Now go. ”

Ben took Rey’s hand tightly. “Thank you,” he said quietly, and they stepped through together, into a crumbling, shaking world of dust and ash as the door behind them closed and the mural began to shatter. 

“Run!” Rey shouted, and began to take off, Ben next to her loping along as fast as he could with muscles that had not been used in months. They ran through the collapsing halls, back to the lift,  clinging to each other as the slow-moving lift brought them up to the surface…

…and crunched to a halt halfway up, whatever mechanism that had powered the thing finally quitting beneath them. Ben, who had been taking advantage of the break to yank on his old pants, stood up and grabbed Rey roughly around the waist, pulling her to him. “Hold on!” he barked.

“To  _ what _ ?” she shouted, clamped onto him with arms and legs like a  tree- lizard as the platform began to tilt sideways. Ben didn’t answer, but she felt the Force surge, and suddenly they were  _ flying, _ streaking upward as if dragged by a huge invisible hook . Her gut dropped, and  she clung tighter. She had never been afraid of heights before, but  _ this _ was on a scale she’d never dreamed of. She could feel Ben's exhilaration in the Force, the excitement of being connected to the Force again, able to use it as he willed.

They shot past the rim of the hole and landed in a heap on the ground, rolling over in the dust as Ben dragged himself to his feet painfully, bare torso streaked with dirt and scraped . “Are you—”

“I’m fine!” she shouted, staggering up. “Let’s go, the ground—”

A rumble beneath them alerted Ben to the situation, and he turned, his whole body thrumming with panic, to fling Rey over his shoulders like she was absolutely nothing, and without giving her even a moment to breathe, he took off running, bare feet slamming into the ground in his fast loping gait toward the Falcon, still waiting past the  underhang of the temple, waiting with her ramp out for Ben Solo to come home at last.


	7. navigate

Once they had cleared the planet’s boundaries and gotten out of the maze that surrounded Exegol, Rey set the autopilot for Tatooine, kicking the ship into lightspeed and getting up from the pilot’s seat. Ben stood from the copilot’s seat as she did, his hands shaking, looking at her with an expression as if he wasn’t sure she was truly there or not.

“Been a long day,” she said hoarsely, clearing her throat. “You, uh. You need the fresher?”

“I—oh.” He looked down at his battered, bruised, bleeding, and filthy body before awkwardly, like it was an afterthought. “Yeah. Thank you.” His belly growled so loudly that she heard it audibly in the corridor outside as she made her escape: the cockpit seemed so  _ small _ with him in it.

“And … food ? ” she said.

“Yes. Please.” He followed her down, looking around the interior of the ship with wide, dark eyes, and caught her looking at him. “Sorry. It’s… a lot.” Both of his hands flexed, and he looked down at them. “Not being really able to feel anything was… numbing. Everything  _ feels _ more now that I’ve slowed down enough to process it. A lot more.”

“I know what you mean,” Rey said quietly. “I, um. I think I have some extra food in the galley. I’ll go make you something, and you can eat it after you shower.”

“Thank you,” Ben mumbled, and shuffled down off the corridor to the quarters, seemingly filling up t he ship to the roof. Rey exhaled deeply, realizing she had been holding her breath until he looked away, and began to frantically think: he would be starving after such a long time without food, so she’d make—something decent. Something hot , if it couldn’t be decent . And a lot of it.

* * *

The galley stove was smoking, the fire detector beeping frantically and the pan she had tried to use to cook the packets of dehydrated sliced meat and egg flaming by the time Ben stepped in, clean and damp and still wearing only his pants.  “Oh,  kark it,” Rey said wearily, shutting off the range as she scraped the enormous amount of food onto a  synthplast plate from the cupboard . “I’m a terrible cook, I’m sorry.”

“No, it—it smells good,” he said, eyes darting down from her face to the plate of half-blackened, scorched food. “Really.”

“Yeah, because you’ve not eaten anything for a month,” she informed him, turning around to push the pan under the sink. More steam billowed up, and she coughed, waving it out of her face. “I have premade packs at the homestead. We can—”

“Mm,” said Ben, and she turned, stunned to see half the contents of the plate in his mouth as he chewed ferociously, shoveling more in. He ate like he was trying to fight the food, like he was afraid it might crawl back out of his mouth : his split lip burst open, blood welling, and he didn’t even notice.

“You… like it?” she asked hesitantly.

“ Mmm ,” he said, nodding and shoving another forkful in. 

“Oh. Okay.” Rey cheered up a little and set the burnt pan in the tiny sonic dishwasher, then swept all the refuse off the counter and into the disposal bin. 

“You should shower,” Ben said, gulping down the last of the burned food. “We have enough water on board. I checked.”

That was thoughtful of him. Rey nodded. “I’ll do that. You want to rest?”

“I’ve been dead for months. I’ve done enough resting.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, a strangely predatory gesture as he maintained eye contact with her. Rey blushed, and he dropped his hand and his gaze, looking at the table instead, and the smear of blood there. “I’ll—meditate or something.  Or go get the  medkit and patch all this up.” He indicated his body in general.

“Okay.” Rey stepped back into the corridor. “See you in a bit.”

* * *

The shower was blissfully hot, and she didn’t even mind that she’d have to change back into her dirty clothes: the sensation of all  Exegol’s dust sloughing off her skin was wonderful beyond words. Even better was the fact that she didn’t have to worry about another person inside her mind, looking at her as she bathed—though, come to think of it, maybe having Ben in the shower wouldn’t be quite as much of an issue. Rey gnawed on her lip, thinking about his massive body over hers , thinking about his soft, gentle lips, the way he’d kissed her…

What if she kissed him again? She shifted from foot to foot, scrubbing down her dirty legs. He had asked her,  _ are we ever going to talk about it, _ and she’d said no, not now—mostly because what was she supposed to say about it to a voice in her head? But maybe he didn’t remember that at all—he had said it was like being in a dream. Rey rinsed herself clean of soap and stepped out on the drying mat, letting the fans blow her dry with warm air. She might ask. Just… subtly. Yeah, that was it: she’d find a way to work it into conversation and see what he thought about… maybe kissing her again.

She stepped back into her pants, hoisting them up and pulling her shirt back on, then made her way down the corridor to the main hold, where Ben’s broad shoulders were hunched over the open  medkit on the  dejarik table. He sat, almost filling the whole bench, trying to get a  bacta patch on the back of his shoulder with his left hand. Two more littered his face, one on his cheek and the other on his lip, and despite all his talk about not needing rest, he looked  near exhaustion, dark circles under his eyes and deep lines in his face. 

“Need help?” she offered, edging closer.

“Yes,” he said, eyes fluttering shut as he gave up and handed over the  bacta patch. “Can’t twist around far enough.”

“Yeah, your shoulders kind of, um, get in the way,” she said, and pressed the patch down on the  large scrape on the back of his shoulder. “There. You look like you could use a nap.”

“I’m fine,” he said stiffly, one hand clenched into a fist in his lap. Rey removed her hand from his skin and watched as tension seemed to build before her eyes in his shoulders: was he  about to explode ? 

“You look… not fine,” she told him awkwardly. 

“Well, you try being dead for two months and see how you look,” he muttered. “How much longer to Tatooine?”

“About two hours.” Rey stepped back. “After that I… don’t really know where to go, or what to— oh,  R’iia’s tits, I’ll have to comm Poe and tell him and the Resistance you’re alive—”

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to,” Ben said wearily. “We can just, you know. Have some time to process all this.”

“Together?” she asked, looking everywhere but at him as she stepped to the other side of the  dejarik bench and pretended to take inventory of the  medkit .

Both his eyes flickered up to meet hers, then dodged away.  “Yeah. Or—or not together, if that’s not—what you—”

“No, I—I’d like to be together,” Rey blurted out. “With you. I mean.” She cringed inwardly: was there  _ really _ no better way she could make that come out? 

“And this—together-ness,”  Ben asked, very carefully, “does it, um, would it involve… more kissing?”  Heat drenched  Rey’s whole face, and several other parts of her body that she was really trying to not think about at the moment. 

“It. I mean. If you—if—”

“If I what?” he asked, eyes darting up to hers.

She could barely breathe. Why did he seem so close when she knew full well he was on the other side of the table? “ If you  _ want… _ that.”

“Do you…” Ben looked absolutely lost, a man occupying a space too small to fit him and navigating territory completely foreign. “Do you  _ not _ want…that?”

Rey sucked in a breath, feeling dizzy as she clutched her hands together under the table. “I…do,” she confessed,  barely able to look him in the eye.

Ben went as still as stone for a moment, the gears turning behind his eyes as he processed that for a moment, and then he stood up slowly, gaze fixed on her with such intensity that she wanted to shrink, to hide from it. “Oh, you  _ do, _ ” he murmured , and the warmth on her face spread down to between her thighs as her breath came short and shallow, her hands shaking. He leaned toward her, never making a single motion more than was absolutely necessary, and Rey froze, anticipation condensing in her gut like a ball  of ice  as his mouth came closer to hers. 

“Ben—” she whispered, half-terrified of her own feelings. 

“I’m here,” he said softly, not touching her as he slid slowly to the floor, kneeling in front of her , one massive shoulder brushing the table. “Whatever—whatever, anything you—”

“ _ Ben _ ,” Rey  croaked , unable to tear her eyes away from his. Her vision began to blur, go fuzzy and trembly, and Ben stopped, reaching up to brush tears away from her cheeks with one thick thumb. 

“What’s wrong? You’re crying.”

“I don’t  _ know, _ ” she sobbed, half-laughing. “I don’t know, I don’t know—you’re  _ alive _ , and I thought—I thought—”

Ben cupped her cheek in his palm. “Shh. It’s okay. We don’t have to do anything you—you don’t—”

She snorted tears and mucus back up her nose and flung herself at him, arms wrapped as tightly as she could around his shoulders as his arms came down, half-careful, to hold her close. 

“You  _ idiot, _ ” she cried, burying her face in his neck. “You died to save  _ me _ —”

“The galaxy needed you,” he said quietly, cheek pressed to her hair as he rocked her gently back and forth. “It didn’t need me.”

“Don’t you ever say that again,” Rey mumbled, her face mashed into his hot skin. He felt like a furnace, like metal left in the sun on  Jakku all day. “Ever. The galaxy needs you just as much as it needs me.”

Ben swallowed. “Okay. So where—where do we start over? Can we start over?”

“ Yeah, we can start over,” she said, lifting her teary face. “I have to go—um, wash my face. You—you go to the sleeping quarters and just, um, wait for me.”

“The—” Realization broke over Ben’s face, and he got up so fast that his shoulder smashed into the  dejarik table, knocking the whole thing off its post and leaving it as a crazy tilt. “Ow.”

“Your shoulder—” Belatedly, Rey realized that  _ he _ had been talking about starting over in the sense of being a good person, and  _ she _ had been talking about starting over in the sense of … kissing. “Ben—"

“It’s fine, it’s fine—” Ben , in his eagerness, was already heading to the corridor leading to the galley, sleeping area, and fresher, and Rey took a deep breath, following behind and slipping into the fresher to take a good long look at herself in the mirror.

She looked rough, even after her shower: there was no better word for it. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and her lips were pale and dry . Rey leaned down and rinsed her mouth out, spitting into the sink.  _ I’d probably taste like a  _ _ happabore’s _ _ backside, _ she thought, breathing into her cupped palm and sniffing. Not terrible, but not great, either. She shifted her weight from side to side,  her skin feeling like it had electricity coursing through it. “You can do this,” she told her reflection. “Go in, kiss him, and just  _ do it. _ ”

Feeling like she had some of her confidence back, Rey slipped out of the fresher and stepped into the sleeping quarters, only to be confronted with Ben Solo, already completely asleep, flat on his back, lips parted, and softly snoring. One huge arm was thrown up above his head, his black hair tangled around his forehead, and Rey bit her cheek in an attempt not to laugh as she stood looking at his sprawled-out form.

Well, they still had over an hour, and the bed wasn’t getting any  less crowded. Rey slipped in alongside his warm body, tucking her hands under her chin, and drifted off to a dark, deep sleep, where she did not dream.


	8. tenderness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> time for that E rating to be earned ho ho

Ben Solo woke with the taste of old smelt in his mouth . He wasn’t dead, which was a huge improvement over the previous…week? Months? He didn’t know, exactly, but he could remember being unable to feel or touch or smell or see, plugged into Rey’s…mainframe, or whatever the closest analogy to having his lifeforce stuck inside another person’s was. Ben shuddered. Not being able to truly feel anything had been the most stifling, frustrating thing he’d ever experienced, but now…

He shifted, and the texture of the bed against his back felt like sandpaper, making him flinch. Everything  _ felt _ __ so much more … well, more, and as he lay there silently trying to get comfortable, memory streamed back: Rey asking him to wait for her in the sleeping quarters, his walk to the bed…

Oh,  kriff . He’d fallen asleep, hadn’t he? Ben silently groaned and sat up, then looked down to his right and saw Rey, breathing deep and even, completely unconscious with her hair stuck to her mouth, drool staining the pillow under her head. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.  _ She came in and fell asleep with me, _ he thought, and found himself oddly touched by it, by the fact that she’d trusted him enough to sleep by him, to be at her most vulnerable at such close proximity to him. He rubbed a hand across his face and felt the stubble at his jaw, rough and scratchy.

He should shave. Rey might not like a beard .

Slowly, he slipped out of bed, making sure not to disturb her, and as quietly as possible he made his way to the fresher. The sink was tiny, and he felt too big for the space (having a body again was going to take some getting used to, even if this one felt like it was running on an ancient, sluggish operating system) but he found a sonic shaver in a cabinet and set to work on his face.

Halfway through, he realized it was probably his father’s shaver. That was enough to make him stop for a minute, overcome by a wave of emotion—and that was something new, too: the ability to have emotions without some nebulous, horrible voice in his head egging him on or goading him or taunting him or pretending to care about him. Ben shut his eyes and enjoyed the silence around his own feelings for a moment, breathing deeply as he finished shaving his face. He’d be able to meditate now,  _ really  _ meditate, and be private inside his own—

A strangled cry from the sleeping quarters put every atom of his body on high alert,  _ danger  _ _ danger _ _! _ and he skidded back into the room, hands out, ready to fight whatever had made Rey make that noise. “Rey?” he barked, looking around wildly. “What—”

“Oh!  R’iia’s _ arse _ _ , _ ” gasped Rey, who was sitting in the middle of the bed, her knees drawn up and her eyes streaming. She wiped her nose frantically, trying to hide her red, wet eyes. “I’m—sorry, sorry, I had a dream about you—you  were  dying again _ , _ and I woke up and you were g-gone—”

“I’m here,” he told her, and, for lack of anything else to do, he sat on the edge of the bed, wanting to comfort her physically, but totally unsure as to how. “I’m not going anywhere. Not ever , if you don’t want me to .”

Rey dragged the heel of her hand across her nose and scooted forward, throwing her arms around his shoulders and holding him tightly. “Don’t ever go anywhere,” she muttered, and he carefully,  _ carefully  _ brought his arms up to cradle her, almost afraid he’d hurt her. “Please.”

“I’m not,” he breathed, inhaling the scent of her hair.  “Promise.” Her nearness was doing something strange and yet completely familiar to his nether regions, but right now, with his sense-starved body, it just felt like agony swelling between his legs. He caught a breath between his teeth and held her away from him sharply, trying to quell the reactions his body was having .  _ This _ hadn’t happened when she’d kissed him. Or at least, he didn’t think so: he’d been numb and blacking out even as he’d drifted away  from her mouth, smiling. But he definitely didn’t remember getting an erection so painfully hard he thought he might explode: even on the brink of death , that w ould definitely  be memorable enough for him to recall it.

“Ben?” Now she looked worried, big hazel eyes looking up into his, and Force, wasn’t this just  _ great? _

“I’m fine,” he said, and his voice came out as a half-squeak, unstable and shaky. Ben cleared his throat and tried again. “Fine. Sorry.” He shifted, but that made it worse: his cock rubbed against the seam of his pants and he let out a grunt, fighting to hold himself together. “Everything, is, uh, very—sensitive.”

“Oh.” Rey considered that for a moment. “Well. I mean. You haven’t—you have to get used to being in a body again.”

“Right,” he agreed, almost desperately. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Can I do anything to help?”

He shut his eyes, every nerve below the belt screaming for relief. “No.”

She frowned, cocking her head slightly. “Are you sure?”

He shut his eyes. She was his literal other half, his dyad in the Force, his  _ soul _ : if he couldn’t talk to her about this, he couldn’t talk to anyone about this. “It’s. Private. Very—very private. Thing.” Why were his hands  trembling ? “My—there’s, there are, parts of my—my body that—that—aren’t exactly—my skin just feels like  flimsiplast and everything, everything is a lot.”

Rey’s eyebrows flew up. “Oh! Your hands hurt?”

“What?”

“They’re shaking. Are you having trouble with your fine-motor skills?” She picked up one of his hands, peering at it with interest. “Maybe your nerves took a hit in the—that place, you know, the World between Worlds. Though, I wouldn’t exactly call that  private , but I guess everyone’s different, huh —and you did wear gloves, um, a  _ lot. _ Can you touch your finger and thumb together?”

He fought not to laugh as he studiously pinched his fingers together, index to pad of thumb. Her fingers felt like fire on his skin, but it at least diverted his attention from his lower circulatory system. “I think it’s getting a little better.”

“Really?” Rey beamed. “That’s good.” She turned suddenly, distracted, and frowned. “Hey, did the engines stop? Are we out of hyperspace?”

“I think so,” he said, easing out of the bed as she bounded up, dashing for the cockpit. 

* * *

The suns were just coming up as Rey landed the Falcon out by the homestead, the white-gold sands of Tatooine stretching for kilometers in every direction, drenched rose in the soft dawn light. Ben followed  her out down the gangplank and squinted in pain, screening his eyes from the sun: it was hardly full-strength at 0500, but still bright enough to make his weak eyes hurt. “Rey, slow down—”

“Oh, your eyes, you said you were sensitive,” she muttered, hurrying back and tearing a strip of brown cloth off her shirt to tie over his eyes. “There. Better? I don’t have sun-goggles.”

“Yeah, this is better,” he said, and it was: the light filtered through the  fineweave enough to allow him to see, but not enough to hurt. He followed her down to the homestead and felt a surge of grief choke him: this place resonated with echoes of the Force, with echoes of anger and fear and longing and joy and loss. “How can you stand being here?”

“What?” She turned, waving him into the entry dome. “ Oh, you mean the—” Rey gestured vaguely. “Force echoes. I just, erm, ignored them. I was busy.”

Yeah, he could see that. The whole place was a shambles, like some kind of hoard: bolts and metal plates and rusty wire and screws and multitools lay scattered everywhere, the walls were dusty and grimy , the floor was sandy, and as he followed her down to the main courtyard  he saw the rest of the homestead fared no better. His bare feet scudded through mounds of sand, and it felt like a thousand needles against his overly sensitive skin. Wincing, he followed her to the only moderately clean room in the house so far, a small sleeping chamber. “Maybe, uh. We should clean a little.”

The  sharp  prickle of hurt, denial, and indignation was strong enough in the Force to make him step back. “It’s fine!” she barked. “I was—remodeling! Fixing the  vaporators , do you  _ want _ to not be able to shower—”

Irritation sparked up his spine: did she think he was trying to be passive-aggressive? Both of his feet were burning, and his eyes hurt, and everything was too much. Ben snapped back, “Sorry, was  _ sweeping  _ too much for you to handle?”

Rey’s eyes blazed with fury as she advanced on him, practically spitting mad. “ Don’t you  _ dare _ ask me what I can’t handle—”

“I’m  _ not _ —”

She brought both of her hands up and seized the front of his thin black shirt, then shoved him back hard. He stumbled, the back of his knees striking the edge of the bed, and fell into a seated position, gaping up at her. “I brought you  _ back _ ,” she gasped, trembling with emotion as she glared down at him with tears in her eyes. “ _ Kark _ _ you _ for even  _ thinking _ about dumping on my  _ cleaning _ —”

Oh, no,  _ no, _ she was crying. This was not good. “Rey—”

Rey wasn’t done. “I’ve been  _ dying inside _ for months, you—you— _ animal, _ I thought Palpatine was inside me and it was  _ you _ and then I had to—I had to get adjusted to you  _ being alive, _ I’m still not adjusted completely to this, any of this, I was—I was—” Her breath was coming in huge, half-hysterical gasps of fury: if she didn’t stop, she’d hyperventilate and probably pass out.

“Lonely,” he finished, making an effort to bring his voice down. “I know.”

She was crying now, really crying, big wet tears and red eyes. “You’re  _ alive _ . Ben. You’re alive—”

Ben reached for her . It was instinctual, and Force be praised, she didn’t shy away or jerk back: she came to him, sobbing, clutching his head to her chest awkwardly as she stood between his thighs at the edge of the bed. The bed. The  _ bed. _ His brain started working furiously. She had brought him to the  _ bedroom _ , and he’d decided to open his fat mouth and start complaining about the  _ mess _ . “I’m sorry. Rey. I’m sorry.” A lump swelled behind his throat, grief and embarrassment fighting for the title of strongest emotion somewhere in his chest. “I shouldn’t have said it.” His cheek was pressed uncomfortably to her chest, and under the thin, scratchy fabric of her  fineweave shirt her heart was pounding, her skin hot, her soft left breast mashed into his nose. Ben fought a wave of  _ very _ unwanted arousal as he brought his hands up to her waist, trying to pull her down a little: anything to get his face away from her chest. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, at a loss of what else to say.

She sniffed, loud and damp, and wiped her nose with her hand as she let go of his head . “’ S’okay . I don’t—I was a mess. Before. The whole time.”

Ben silently cursed at his body as it betrayed him and set every single nerve ending between his thighs on fire, even as he moved away, because now he could see the faint shape of her nipples through the thin shirt and oh, no, that was  _ not helpful _ . “Me—me too. And it’s okay. You were… not doing well.”

“No, I wasn’t. I didn’t have—well. You.” She offered a shy, tremulous little smile, and her lashes were all stuck together with tears and her eyes were so  _ pretty _ , and Ben sucked in a soft breath of agony as his body whined insistently for release, the pain ramping up. 

“You…yeah,” he said, like an idiot, and frantically tried to think of the most boring thing he could think of to say. “A Force-bond like ours is something that…you know, if one of the people died, it would just feel like a big, sucking wound in the Force.”

“That’s what it felt like,” she said softly, nodding. Why the  _ hell _ was she not moving back? Her tits were practically staring him in the face, and he was just sitting there, unable to move, because his erection was stuck between his pant leg and his thigh and if he shifted she’d  _ see it. _ “Even though you weren’t really dead.”

“Yeah,” Ben said in a hoarse voice, swallowing. “I guess I was dead enough, though. Uh. Rey. I—I don’t know how to say this, but—”

“Oh!” she said, seemingly coming to frantic life again. “You—you wanted to talk about the kiss. I remember. I kept putting it off, because, you know, it would be weird to talk about it with someone in your head, but now it’s not—as weird.”

“No,” Ben croaked, and she must have mistaken his response for an agreement, because she was suddenly back in his space and he was tilting his head up to protest in blank terror and her mouth was  back on his: she was firm and strong and soft and yielding all at once, and he opened his mouth against hers to gasp, to  drag her deeper, to  push away in panic, because his  _ cock— _

Rey’s tongue scraped across his lip, and her hand grasped down at his waist, lifting the black fabric, her bare hand touching his nerve-raw, touch-starved skin, and Ben Solo cried out into her mouth and jerked his hips up as he came in his pants, untouched, shaking and gasping as the sheer force of his climax blacked out his vision and made lights dance in his weak eyes. His spine was being torn apart by lightning, his gut was on fire, his skin was burning: his brain was dissolving into clouds of multicolored sparks and it  _ would not stop. _

He came to on the bed, flat on his back. Rey sat at his side with a  horrified expression on her face and both hands hovering above his chest, like she was afraid to touch him. “Oh, Force,” she said, seeing his eyes opening. “I thought I’d killed you. Again.”

“Uh,” he said weakly, humiliated. There was a cooling, sticky sensation in his pants, and he did not relish the idea of having to clean that up. “S-sorry.” There were tears in his eyes, dried salt-tracks down the corners, and he awkwardly sat up on one elbow, trying to scrub them clean with a hand. “That’s. That’s not. Uh. Normal.” He shook his head like a stunned animal, trying to gain his bearings.

“I didn’t think so.” Rey looked slightly guilty as she gnawed on her bottom lip. “I tried to, um, look you over. I know what the problem was. Here.” She handed him a fistful of  saniwipes , avoiding eye contact, and he closed his eyes in mortification as he took them. “I can show you the fresher if you don’t remember where it is.”

“That won’t be necessary. I remember.”  _ Take me back to  _ _ Exegol _ _ and just let me die.  _ “I’m—sorry. About the—lack of control.”

“Oh. There’s no need to be sorry,” she said, in the middle of ducking out of the bedroom. “It was—it was—” Rey colored deeply and left, leaving her sentence unfinished.

* * *

The shower felt like sand blasting on his back and arms. Ben stood there with lukewarm water pouring off his body and shouldered the discomfort as much as he could: it seemed to be slightly more bearable after that humiliating episode in the bedroom, but he’d be lying if he’d said he wasn’t still extremely uncomfortable. The mess in his pants had rendered the trousers unwearable until they were washed, so he’d scrounged up a loose pair of ancient, soft brown trousers that looked like they m ight date back to his father’s time. For whatever reason, his nipples were so tender that he didn’t think he could stand to put a shirt on, so after he got out and let the half-junked fan dry him, he gingerly stepped into the pants and headed for the courtyard, keeping to the early-morning shadows: his eyes still ached.

Rey was sitting cross-legged in the kitchen, fiddling with a grill and several packets of pre-cooked food on top of some fresh stuff she’d probably bought from some stall in  Mos Eisley. “Oh,” she said brightly, turning  around . Both her eyes widened, traveling across his  bare skin, so fast he thought he might have  imagined it, before she turned back to the food. “I—I’ve been trying cook ing better. Maybe not leaving it as long, and it won’t burn.”

“You have to turn the heat down,” he said, reaching around her back to adjust the temperature knob. She hesitated at the touch of his arm on her back, and he wished her shirt didn’t feel like sandpaper. “ Too hot, and it’ll burn. Medium is fine.  Then you push it around on the surface until it’s done.”

“How do I know when it’s done?”

“It’ll be cooked, but not burnt. I’ll show you.” Ben reached for a clean spatula and expertly scraped up the congealing mass of hot food, flipping it over . The sizzle sounded like a rake being scraped across  duracrete to him, and he winced. 

“It’s fine,” Rey told him, noticing his expression. “Go—go lay down somewhere quiet. You don’t have to help.”

“I do,” he insisted, and chopped the mass of meat paste into cubes with the edge of the spatula, pushing them around the surface of the grill. “ And after we eat, I can—sweep the bedroom or something.” The thought of walking into the hot suns with a rake in his hand made him sweat a little. 

“I can do it,” Rey said. “You’re…not recovered.” She wasn’t making eye contact, but the blush on her cheeks was enough to make Ben look away in embarrassment. 

“I’m fine,” he told her. “It’s better now. A little.” That wasn’t a total lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, either. 

“You know you can—just tell me if you—you need space,” she offered haltingly. 

“That’s the last thing I need,” he grumbled, checking the meat. It was done, so he scooped it up and set it on the closest clean tray. “Do you—are we staying here for a while?”

“I—I guess we are. For now.  Until I can think of somewhere else to go.” She rubbed her nose. 

“You’re not with the Resistance anymore?” he asked , puzzled.

“I… I don’t know,” she confessed, sitting down at the narrow table as he wedged his body into the bench seat. “I thought about going back after… this, you know, it was supposed to be a short break—but I don’t know anymore. I don’t really know what my place is.” 

‘I’m sorry,” he said, guilt washing over him. “I…shouldn’t have come back.”

“No,” Rey said quickly. “No, you should have. Without you, it was like…”

“Having half your soul torn out,” he finished, daring to look up at her as she portioned out the food. “I know. That’s what it felt like for… the part of me that was still in the World between Worlds. Not being able to feel you in the Force was… agony.”

“Yeah,” she whispered, fork halfway to her mouth. “That’s what it was like.”

Neither of them moved for a moment. Ben took a deep breath and started, “Rey…”

“The food’s going to get cold,” she said quickly, shoving it into her mouth. “Eat up. We’ve got a lot to do.”

* * *

With a strip of linen tied around his  eyes to block the  sunslight and another scrap tied around his hair to shield it from dust, Ben Solo was ready to start cleaning. Rey tied her own hair back and poked fun at him for fiddling so much with the knot of his scarf, and he threw pebbles at her with the Force when she wasn’t looking, pretending to be completely engrossed in sweeping when she whirled in indignation. 

Together, the two of them scrubbed, swept, scraped, wiped, and polished every inch of the homestead, Rey by turns teasing Ben and worrying over whether it was too much on his beleaguered senses. It wasn’t too bad, and as time passed Ben found himself more and more able to bear the sand under his feet and the heat on his skin … and the occasional touch of Rey’s arm as she bumped into him in the courtyard. She was warm, and firm, and soft, and everything she did made his mouth go dry and turned him into a clumsy teenager again, stumbling over his own words and feet and  feeling like a  bantha in a teahouse. He wondered what it would be like to kiss her really, properly this time: he wondered what she’d do if he dropped the broom and caught her up in his arms…

He cut his thoughts off uncomfortably and shifted his weight.  _ Focus,  _ he chided himself.  _ Clean first, kissing later. _

* * *

Rey watched Ben out of the corner of her eye. Even blindfolded, he moved with a loping confidence and easy gait, moving around obstacles and working like a machine. He was graceful despite his frame, turning easily and ducking to clean things at her direction. 

What would it be like to  _ kiss _ him again? He’d reacted so violently to her first attempt—stupid, really stupid of her to try that: he’d choked out something unintelligible and almost bitten her lip as he’d convulsed under her hand s , his skin warm and damp, and after that—well. After that, he’d slumped over to the side,  large body gone  boneless with his soft mouth slack and a flush on his cheeks , tears tangled in his eyelashes, and she’d lowered him down, checking his pulse  _ just _ in case—he hadn’t vanished , at any rate, and she’d frantically looked him over from head to toe, noting a swollen lump in his pants and a mess  coating his skin above the waistband —and then she’d  _ known, _ and that had been when he’d groggily woken, humiliation written in every line of his face.

Except. You know. She hadn’t minded it. Much. At all. She’d almost wished—well, she didn’t know  _ what _ , really, but she’d liked  it as a whole, apart from the part where she’d thought for a second he was dying. She’d never seen him  like that: unguarded, completely falling to pieces. She wanted to see him do it again, to kiss him again, to sneak her hands up his bare  back a nd cling to him and  _ hold _ him. 

_ Just wait. Give him time. Give it time. _


	9. hands

They ate at sunset, nibbling on blue-buttered  haroun bread and blue-milk cheese in the shaded dining room as the shadows deepened to soft blue and the solar-powered evening lights, newly repaired, flickered on in the dusk. 

“I think,” said Rey, very carefully as they finished their meal, “the bedroom’s big enough for both of us.”

“Oh,” Ben said, looking suddenly very alert. “ Both?”

“ That is—you don’t have to sleep in there if, I mean, you—”

“No, I want to,” he said immediately, standing up too quickly and hitting his knee on the table. “Ow. I’ll just, um. Get washed. And meet you. There. In the bedroom.”

“Yeah. Yes!” Rey cringed inwardly: she hadn’t meant to sound  _ quite _ that loudly enthusiastic. “I’ll—I’ll just tidy this up.”

“Okay. Sure,” he said, and shuffled out of the room in his hunched, loping gait that reminded her of some large, clumsy animal. Rey watched him go, mouth suddenly gone very dry, and raced through cleaning, almost throwing the dishes into the washer and scraping all the uneaten food into the disposal—normally, she would have saved even the scraps, but her brain was racing at a hundred klicks an hour and she couldn’t  _ think _ . 

She slowed herself down on the way to the bedroom, seeing that the door was shut and the lights on in the fresher: that was good, he was still washing up, so she had time to get ready. Rey got into the small, snug room, and immediately began tidying up: the floors were clean, so it was a matter of pushing the clean laundry away into the closet for later folding and brushing the sand off the bed. What else did people do before they planned to sleep together? She racked her brains for a moment, thinking, then switched on the wall  glowlamp and shut off the overhead one, flooding the room in a gentle, golden glow. Lighting. That was one. What else? Should she be naked when he came in? She hooked her thumbs into her pants, then paused to reconsider: maybe he’d  _ want _ to take her clothes off. Maybe he knew what he was doing more than she might. 

Rey was interrupted by the door hissing open, and a soft intake of breath: she turned around and swallowed hard at the sight of Ben in a very loose, soft old shirt and pants, damp and clean. “H-hi,” he stammered, looking at her like he wasn’t sure she was real. 

“Oh—hello,” she replied, feeling like an idiot. “I was—I was—trying to, um, decide whether or not I should take off, um, my—” She didn’t want to say  _ clothes _ , because that struck her as a stupid thing to say, so she settled on “—my boots. You know. Before.” A hand vaguely indicated the bed.

“You… don’t take off your boots to sleep?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

Oh, no, that was  _ far _ worse. “I—no. I mean, yes, I—I don’t sleep in my boots. ” Her face flushed scarlet. “I didn’t know if you wanted to, um, take them off for me. And—the rest of it.”

“Oh,” said Ben, two spots of color appearing on his cheeks. “I—ah. Hmm.”

“So…” she prompted after an awkward moment. “Should I—take everything off, or—”

His reaction was very odd. “No! No. Don’t. I’ll—I want to.”  Both eyes swept across her form, taking her in, appraising. “You can take your boots off, though.”

“I thought you might,” Rey said, backing up and sitting on the bed as she bent to undo the fastenings on her boots. “And you—are you feeling—”

“Better,” he managed, seemingly stuck to one spot on the floor. “Rey. I—I’ve never—done this.”

“Done…what?”

The color on his face deepened and spread. “Had. You know. This kind of—with anyone. Not—physically.”

Oh. So he didn’t really know what he was doing, after all.  “That’s all right. I haven’t either.” She tugged off the other boot and tossed it across the room. “Come sit.”

Cautiously, as if he was afraid he’d spook her,  he crossed the floor and sat on the bed b eside her, the mattress sinking a little under his weight. “You want me to, um. Take off your…things?” he offered, looking over her shirt with a strangely eager expression on his face. 

“Yes,” she squeaked, suddenly very nervous. Ben reached for the hem of her shirt and gently, carefully, without touching her skin, lifted it up and up over her head, past her arms, and laid it gently on the bed, looking at the wall and taking a deep breath to center himself before daring to look at her nude upper half.

“Force,”  Ben muttered, eyes focused directly on her breasts, mouth gone  slack. “ Ohhh . Uh.”

Well, that was a gratifying response. “You… want to touch them?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, almost immediately. Then, voice cracking, “No.  _ Force. _ I don’t know.”

“Need a moment?”

“Just—just—” He exhaled deeply, turning to look away. “It’s a lot,” he said miserably, shifting his weight from side to side. A soft grunt escaped his teeth, something like " _ah_."

“Does it hurt?” asked Rey, looking directly at his groin. “It seemed like it stopped hurting when you—I mean, when it—”

Ben looked like he was going to choke. “Not—in that way, I don’t—"

Her hand brushed over his thigh and she nudged the side of her palm gently against the bulge there, pressed against his leg. Ben stiffened, hands digging into the bedclothes, and she looked up quickly. “This isn’t going to make you—”

“No,” he croaked, shuddering. “You can. Keep. Doing that.”

“Okay,” she said, and  cupped him in her hand, testing, touching. It seemed quite a lot larger than what she’d previously seen during their escape from  Exegol , and then his nudity had just seemed… ordinary, expected, nothing to be titillated over. This was something entirely different. “If it hurts, tell me, and—”

“Doesn’t hurt,” he managed to spit out, wound as tense as a cord. “Doesn’t. Not. Rey.  _ Rey _ —”

She sensed it, then, right on the periphery of the Force: he was on the brink of climax, and desperate not to be. Rey pulled her hand back quickly and watched as he groaned, a deep, ragged sound, and bent at the waist, gasping in air.  Ben bared his teeth and groaned again, then pressed a hand to his stomach, digging his fingers in, in what she could sense was an attempt to force his senses back to normal. “Don’t do that,” she chided, pulling on his wrist. 

“It—helps ground me,” he whispered, looking half-ashamed. 

She shook her head. “I can feel your nerves are still all haywire from here. Don’t make it worse.”

“I just—” He shut his eyes, a multitude of emotions flooding him. “I just n — I want—you. But I can’t—can’t even be touched without—”

“You’ll adjust. It takes time.” She awkwardly cupped his cheek, not knowing what else to say. “Do you want me to touch you again?”

“No,” Ben said, looking gutted as he ran a hand down his face. “Yes. I just—it’s not—”

“I’ll start here,” she whispered, and lightly touched a fingertip to the beauty-mark on his cheek, then the next, then the next: her fingers like a compass that swung from point to point across the marks on his face, her fingers like a pair of legs walking through a forest. “You’re very smooth. Warm. And a little rough. At the same time, like... velvet.” She marked out every freckle and mole, and carefully, carefully cupped his cheek, rubbing softly.

“Huh,” Ben managed, shutting his eyes.

Rey inched closer, thigh pressed to his. “ Is this okay?”

His eyes shut, his nostrils flaring slightly as he took in a deep breath. “Yes,” he whispered, hands shaking a little as she trailed a finger down his neck.

Her hands paused  on their way down, on his shoulders. “If it’s too much, we can always just do something else, or go to sleep.”

“No. I don’t—” He found her eyes with his, one huge hand curling around hers awkwardly. “I don’t want to just go to sleep. ” Slowly, he bent closer to her face, and Rey froze. “I want…” he breathed.

“Ben,” she whispered, and his mouth was on hers with a groan, his lips moving like he wanted to devour her alive. That damn nose of his kept poking her in the cheeks, smashing itself flat as one hand grasped her bare waist, and he cried out into her mouth, fingers tightening—but nothing more. His mouth was hot and soft and tender, and Rey fought the urge to slip closer, to press herself to him chest to chest as he paused, teeth digging into her lip gently. 

“Nnnngh,” he groaned, and pulled her flush to him with all the grace of a happabore, crushing her to his chest and yanking her to his lap as his stiff cock slid up between the crease of her thigh and her pelvis, both of their trousers still on. She stuttered slightly as her breasts flattened against his chest, clinging to him on instinct: why the  _ hell _ were his shoulders so broad? His voice became a high, broken thing as her hands found his back, grasping tight. “ _ Rey—” _

One clumsy thrust, and Ben was done for. His forehead buried itself in the curve of her neck as his hips stuttered and jerked, his mouth open and gasping, groaning helplessly as he shook like a leaf under her, his hands tightening and releasing by turns. Rey held on, feeling him crest and fall in the Force, and shivering at the aftershocks ripping through their bond: she was hopelessly wet and open between the legs and her nipples had pebbled into hard little nubs where they pressed against his chest. She squirmed, trying to subtly bear down on his huge thigh for some relief, and he mistook it for discomfort, muttering a half-lucid apology and wriggling away from under her, sheepishly avoiding eye contact. 

“No—” she began, then bit her lip, pressing her thighs together. “I meant—I—”

“I shouldn’t have—grabbed you like that,” he managed, looking up at her. “Sorry.”

“I liked it,” Rey confessed, trying very hard to not climb back into his lap. “Can you—could you do it again?”

He blinked. “What?”

“I—” She shut her eyes, taking in a small breath: heat curled around her gut, she needed _something_ to.. . “I’m. It’s. Just—give me your hand,” and Rey snatched him by the wrist, her fingers barely touching, to pull his hand between her legs. His blunt, calloused fingers traced the seam of her pants, and felt the dampness there. Ben’s eyes widened, his face still open and slack with release, and looked up at her with surprise.

“You’re…is that  _ good _ ?”

“Yes,” Rey managed. “Very good.  Really.” His fingers pressed experimentally, and she rocked forward a little, seeking the pressure. “ _ Ah _ —”

“You like that?” he asked, sounding more puzzled than anything else, and repeated the movement, two fingers rubbing gently at the seam of her pants. She choked, thighs gone tense: it had been a while since she’d gotten herself off, and the gusset of the trousers was pressing  _ right _ where it needed to. If he kept doing this, she’d—she’d— “Rey?”

“What?” she panted, trying to focus past the burning heat in her body. 

“I asked, do you like that?” Ben’s fingers moved a little higher, and she lost the rhythm. 

“No! No, go back to where you—before—”

“Oh,” he said, and returned down to the seam, examining her trousers with narrow, intense eyes. “Here?” His fingers pressed gently, and Rey jolted with the sensation.

“Yes,” she breathed, biting into her bottom lip as he rubbed and rolled and pushed,  _ just _ where it felt the nicest. She suddenly thought,  _ what if he took my pants off? _ The resulting, heady rush of blood to her lower body surprised even her: if she’d thought she was aroused before,  _ this _ was like drowning in want. 

He seemed to understand what she wanted immediately, undoing her fastenings with quick, precise, rough movement and slipping the trousers down her legs. She wasn’t wearing basics, and Ben sucked in a shocked little breath, eyes trained with  laserlike intensity on  everything between her thighs. “That,” he managed, finally. “Not. What I thought it would look like.”

She blew a tuft of hair out of her eye. “What did you _think_ women looked like? Just—a hole between the legs and nothing else?”

“No!” Ben protested, flushing. “I thought—I don’t know. I never really thought about it that much.”

“Do you—want to touch it?” she prompted, shivering in the cooling air of the bedroom. “You can touch it.”

He choked a sharp little laugh, weak and breathless. “Um. I—” Both hands were working frantically: one on his thigh, one on the bedclothes. “I just. It’s. I’m—” His voice cracked, and he coughed, shaking his head. “Getting, um, hard again. I don’t—it’s a lot—”

“Oh,” said Rey, crestfallen. “I can—just do myself up and get myself off, if you—”

“What? You can—” He blinked, and Rey , sitting there naked, thought,  _ holy  _ _ R _ _ ’ _ _ iia _ _ , did _ _ n’t  _ _ anyone ever tell him _ _ anything _ _? _ She guessed maybe not: Luke didn’t seem the type for a good old sit-down chat about the facts of life , and he’d probably been sent away  very  young to the Academy.  Snoke —Palpatine—had  _ not _ been the sort to mentor him like  _ that _ , and—who else had he had? She wracked her brain trying to think. “Whatever you’re thinking,” he said in a brittle tone, much different from  his initial one, “I’m not an idiot.”

“No! I wasn’t thinking you were!” Rey patted at his arm awkwardly as he looked away, color suffusing his face. “Ben.  I’m sorry. Look. I’ll teach you. Give me your hand.”

He darted a look over to her face, searching her eyes for something, and apparently he found it, because he gave in and let her pull his hand back between her thighs. “I, uh. Kind of have a mess to clean up,” he muttered, his fingers tracing up her inner thighs, shaking a little on the soft flesh there. 

“Later,” she said, fighting not to giggle as his fingers brushed a ticklish spot.  “Oi! Gentle. Just—”

“Here,” Ben finished, and brushed his thumb very gingerly against her body, right where he’d been rubbing a minute before, but without the fabric of her pants as a barrier to sensation. Rey’s back arched despite herself. “Yes?”

“Little—harder,” she squeaked, and shut her eyes, mouth open as he gave her a few good firm and well-placed strokes, then slipped a curious finger beneath and back between soft folds , up into—“ _ Oi! _ ”

“Huh,” he choked, finger frozen in place. “That—it—”

“ _ Yes _ ,” said Rey, wriggling forward in a desperate attempt to drive his finger further. He felt huge, even though rationally she knew his finger couldn’t be  _ that _ big . His name escaped her lips in a half-croaking little wheeze, and he grunted softly, eyes closing as he pushed his finger in, all the way up to the first knuckle, and pumped gently. 

“Like that,” Ben murmured, watching her face in fascination. “I can feel it. It’s not quite…”

“More,” she gasped, trying not to reach down and pull at his hand. “ _ More. _ ”

“Hmm,” he said, and added a second finger, somewhat awkwardly, and she hissed a little at the stretch and burn, but  _ oh, _ his fingers were huge, thick and solid and  _ good _ , and he crooked them a little inside her, testing, experimenting. She whined in protest when he removed them suddenly, slick digits gleaming in the light from the wall, and slid down off the bed to the floor. 

“Ben, what—”

“Shh,” he said intently, and dragged her to the edge of the bed so that she balanced right on the edge, her soft bits all exposed and open. It felt cold, but not when he settled down between her thighs, pushing his fingers back in—and  _ that _ was a new angle, with him kneeling on the ground, one hand curled lightly around her right thigh to hold her steady, right hand pumping away between her legs. “You want a third?”

“ Huuuuuh ,” said Rey, gripping the blankets with both fists. Her feet scrabbled for purchase on the smooth  synthstone floor, legs not quite reaching around his bulk. “Ben.  _ Ben. _ ”

“Here,” he said absently, patting his shoulder with his free hand. She lifted her legs and rested them on his shoulders, so the back of her knees lay there, and the next good solid thrust sent her back to brace her torso on one arm, the other coming up to cover her mouth. Ben’s eyes flickered from between her legs to her face. “You can… make noise,” he said, almost hopefully. “If you want.”

“ Unnnghh ,” she groaned, ripping her hand away and tangling it in the bedcovers again. “Ben,  _ Ben _ , do you know—how many times I  th -thought about your  _ hands _ —”

“My hands?” he asked, a note of dry amusement in his voice as he kept working steadily away. “ You want another finger or not?”

“ _ Yes, _ I  kriffing want another f-finger, give—” His ring finger slipped in slowly, slowly, to join the other two, and Rey whined, lifting her knees as the stretch passed the bounds of  _ nice _ and turned into pain. “St-stop, wait,  _ wait _ —”

He paused, frozen, knuckle-and-a-half deep into her. “Okay.”

She sucked in air, trying to concentrate. If this was how she took his  _ fingers, _ how in blazes was she going to take his—“O-okay. Slowly. Why in  R’iia’s _ arse _ are your hands so damned  _ big?” _

He frowned, as if the idea had never occurred to him. “My hands aren't big. You’re just small.” Slowly, he inched in further, and she groaned, bending forward until their heads were almost touching. Further, and further, until _almost_ to his hand she knew she could not take any more—at least, where circumference was concerned. “This?”

Her only answer was a half-formed groan of frustration. “ _ Yes _ ,” she hissed, when she could speak, and he began to pump in, out, his thumb rubbing almost as if it was an afterthought at her clit. She shouldn’t have even come from it, really: his movements were careful and somehow  _ not _ , like everything he did was scaled down from some lunging and brutal motion, but like he was also trying to savor her body, her limits, her—

Anyway. Rey came, and she came hard: Ben tore his hand away in surprise and fear the second she let out a shout of release and she had to rub herself through it but  _ Force, _ it was good: her whole body flooded with a sense of peace, release, warmth. She collapsed, half-boneless, on the bed sideways, and almost fell off: Ben picked her legs up and set her on the bed carefully, watching her face with the same intensity he might give a training holo, or a detailed lecture on—whatever he found interesting, she guessed. She couldn’t tell with her eyes drifting shut and her mind blanked out. 

When it was over, she sat up, naked and sheepish. Ben was still where she’d left him, kneeling on the floor with an expression on his face like he couldn’t  _ quite _ believe what he’d seen. “You’re… okay?” he asked.

“Fine,” she assured him, raking hair out of her face. “Better than fine, really.”

“It was…good?” he prompted, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “I mean, you liked it?”

Rey knew laughing at his eagerness would destroy him. “Yes, Ben. It was very nice, and good. Well done. ”

He blinked, like he didn’t trust his own ears. “Oh,” he said, flushing. “That—good. Great.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He stood, awkward and enormous and broad and half-naked. “We should. Um. Sleep.”

“You don’t need …help? ” She indicated his trousers, where a considerable tent in the fabric was very visible. 

Ben covered himself with a hand, cheeks gone scarlet and looking anywhere but her. “No. It’s fine. I’ll—handle it myself.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised, but he was already hurrying out the door for the trek across the yard to the fresher. 

* * *

When he came back in, she was half-asleep,  wrapped in blankets,  the fog of endorphins carrying her off and away. The bed depressed,  and she turned on instinct, wriggling closer to the heat source in the chill of the room. “Mm,” she mumbled.

A hand  came up tentatively, stroking her hair back from her face. “That,” whispered a very soft, gentle voice, “was the first time anyone’s ever told me _well done_ for anything in ten years.”

Sleepy tears filled her eyes, and she cracked one eyelid open, looking up at him. He wasn’t looking at her anymore, though: Ben was looking at the wall, wearing a very fragile look on his face, lips trembling. She shut her eye again quickly, and he bent down after a moment, lips trailing soft on her forehead like the ghost of a kiss, before turning off the light with a flick of the Force and lying down carefully beside her, as if he was afraid to disturb something growing between them.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day passed in a blur , both  Ben and Rey moving like fiends to clean, repair, work. Small touches on lower backs, little brushes against each other, tiny moments seized from the air and held tightly against hearts: those were the fuel on the fire that kept them both pursuing whatever would come at nightfall. By dinner, Ben was able to stand wearing most clothes again and handled getting his thumb stuck in a  vaporator gear about as well as he would have under normal circumstances. Rey moved around him carefully, like a moon orbiting her planet, almost afraid to touch him lest the spell be broken.

_ We could do it. Really do it. _ Thoughts she’d never really dwelled on before invaded her mind and seemed to take over her body: wants and desires she’d never spoken in her life. His words echoed, a constant refrain in her mind.  _ The first time anyone’s ever told me well done for anything in ten years. _ She wanted to curl around him, lavish him with praise and affection, kiss him and hold him and tell him how  _ good _ she knew he was. Her thoughts kept bleeding over into the bond: Ben looked up a few times, ears scarlet, and back down to his work.

He was getting a little stubbly, she noticed, in the soft white light of the dining room a dark shadow lay on his chin, his lips, his cheeks in patches. Rey liked it: it was so different from all the other faces she’d seen on him, from the smooth-cheeked, haughty dark prince to the haggard, scarred, desperate man who’d begged her to join him, to the dirt-smeared, beaming, boyish one she’d kissed in the ashes of Exegol.  _ How are you so many different people? _ she wanted to ask.  _ Which of your faces is your own, and which is the mask? _

“You about ready for bed?” he asked, bringing her back to reality. Both their plates were empty, and she sat there  in silence. “I mean, or—sleeping, if you—”

“No, no sleeping,” she said quickly, avoiding his eyes as she took her plate to the washer. “I mean. Bed, but—you know.” A flush spread over her cheeks, and she heard him snort a little, then step to the door. 

“Right. I’ll be there. You can take the fresher first.”

* * *

Rey stood in the shower, scrubbing every inch of her body with cool water and old soap, her heart pounding about a million klicks an hour.  _ Calm down, _ she told herself sternly, hands shaking as she washed her underarms and sniffed the washcloth to make sure all was clean.  _ He’ll probably be asleep again when you go in, like the last time he waited.  _ Somehow, though, she didn’t think that would be the case. 

She stepped out when she ran out of skin to scrub and eyed herself in the mirror. Still thin, but filling out a little on Ben’s cooking: narrow hips, small backside, pert breasts, fluffy dark hair at the juncture of her thighs. She wondered suddenly if she should try to shave that like she did her underarms, but decided against it: there was no real reason to, unlike her underarm hair getting caught on those damn sand-bindings and pulling all the time (the habit had just continued, even after she’d left the wraps behind) and Ben didn’t seem to care about it—or he hadn’t when his fingers had been knuckle deep inside her. Warmth bloomed below her belly, and she squirmed at the memory. Maybe he’d do that again. Maybe he’d do more. 

No use in waiting around, though. Rey lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and walked, wrapped in an old robe, across the moonlit courtyard to the bedroom door. He was waiting inside, still wearing every stitch of his clothes (dusty and grease-stained from the day’s work, with tears and old holes, but serviceable and decent) and he was barefoot, both pale feet planted firmly on the floor as he sat on the bed. “Rey,” he said by way of greeting, eyeing her up with a strange expression on his face. 

“Hello,” she said, feeling foolish as she clutched the robe to her throat. “Uh. I haven’t got anything on under this.”

His lips parted in shock and his eyes dilated widely, a flush staining his cheeks. “Don’t—don’t you?”

Immediately, she felt like an idiot. “No. I thought—”

“It’s fine,” Ben said quickly, standing up and awkwardly stepping back. He seemed to take up the whole room, and she stepped forward, hardly daring to touch him, her heart pounding in her throat. “Fine. I’ve been—thinking.”

“About?” Rey prompted, taking another step. She was almost touching him, so close she could have leaned forward and kissed him, but she didn’t.

The expression on his face was somewhat wary: guarded, careful.  “About… what you like. What you might like. I—it’s, you know—I kind of…picked things up when I was rattling around inside your head, and  _ please _ don’t kill me for it, but —you know. I saw. Things.”

Mortified beyond words, Rey shut her eyes. She only hoped he hadn’t seen her most used  fantasy: the one where she undid  Kylo Ren’s trousers and rode him to completion, his broken voice begging her for release under the mask: or even more embarrassing, the one she called up  only  when sleep came hard and her usual daydreams just didn’t cut it: herself gowned in black,  Kylo Ren manhandling her, pulling her hair, calling her  _ scavenger _ and bending her over the throne of the  Sith , taking her from behind…

“That one, yes,” he said softly, and Rey hid her face in shame, tears welling up: the whole idea of truly going to the Dark was horrifying to consider, but the  fantasy was  _ private _ , something—

An image grazed her mind gently, seeping into hers from their Force-bond: an image of the back of her head, tenderly focused on the nape of her neck, as she was bent over from behind and opened and thrust into, exhilaration bursting through her body, victory and defeat rolled together in one. Rey’s toes curled, sensation prickling down her arms and legs. She was on the verge of gasping  _ yes _ when the image withdrew, and there she was, pink-cheeked and staring down an embarrassed Ben Solo, whose hands rested conspicuously in front of his pants. “That’s one of mine,” he said, when he could speak again. “I have… many. All involving you. You’re not the only one to have thoughts like…that.”

Rey found her voice again. “Show me another,” she requested. “Please.”

Ben obliged her with a terse little nod , and she was treated to a scene of herself in the restraints she remembered from  Starkiller , locked down and defenseless, and his black-gloved hands creeping slowly up her thighs as she moaned and struggled and  _ hated _ him, but didn’t really hate him—that was clear in the vision , and it was clear that he very much liked the concept on the whole . She wondered if this was integral to his  sexual function  or something: play-acting at  _ not _ wanting sex while clearly wanting it. 

“Not exactly,” said Ben’s voice, seeming far away. “Just this…idea is… particular .”

Rey kept watching the fantasy play out. Dream- Kylo wanted her to beg him, to make herself pliant and willing: dream-Rey protested and gasped and squealed and whined until his gloved hands were on her body and delving between her thighs and into her, and it was then that she finally gave him what he wanted: pleading for him to undo her restraints, giving up, giving in to—

The image cut out, leaving Rey surprisingly even more flushed and quite a bit damper between the legs that she thought she’d be. “What happens after that?” she asked, baffled as to the sudden ending.

“Don’t know,” he said, abashed. “I was usually, um, done by then.” The  juxtaposition of  idea s of  Kylo Ren both as an untouchable, black-clad acolyte and as a man frantically jerking himself off to thoughts of her was  intriguing, and Rey thought for a moment about the layers and layers between his hands and his own skin: had they been a sort of ward against any kind of sexual gratification? By the time he could get all that off, he probably hadn’t been very receptive to certain stimuli anymore.  “Yes,” he said, soft and toneless. “In a way.”

“Oh,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.”

He inhaled deeply, shoulders heaving, and looked down at her with an indecipherable expression. “Rey,” he said quietly. 

“ Wh -what?”

“Do you trust me?”

She bit that question between her teeth for a moment, savoring, considering. He’d fought her, sworn to hate her, begged her to join him, and saved her life in the end, and she—she had bested him in combat every single time they’d met, broken his attachment to the Dark, run him through with his own blade, healed him, taken him into her arms, kissed him, lost him, found him again. “Yes,” she said finally. “I do.”

“Good,” he said, and one big hand found her waist, turning her about roughly so that she faced away from him. She braced herself for being pawed at clumsily, like others had tried to do so long ago on Jakku before meeting the business end of her staff, but instead he just mouthed softly at the back of her jaw, where it met her ear, his short stubble scraping her skin, before pushing her forward slowly, inexorably, to lie on the bed face-first. “Down here.”

“Flat?” she asked, wriggling to spread her legs more openly and get herself positioned at the edge of the bed.

“Yes, like that.” His hand trailed down to the back of her knee, and he lifted the old robe up and up until it brushed her backside, tickling slightly. Rey reddened at the cool gust of air on her bare ass, and huffed softly, which seemed to spur Ben on. He muttered something she didn’t catch and ran one bare hand up her thigh, fingers curling to the inside, until his palm cupped her cheek, full and firm, finger to palm. He squeezed gently, his fingers digging into her muscle, and she whimpered slightly, trying to crane her neck around. 

“Ben—”

“Shh,” he said, hand curling inward and tracing at the soft, damp seam of flesh between her thighs. “Mmm. Look at that. Are you... wet for me, little scavenger?” 

The words were hesitant, testing, as if unsure of their effect on her. He shouldn’t have worried: Rey audibly choked and jerked back, seeking his fingers like a heat-sensitive tracker. “Ky— _ Ben—” _

His hands withdrew, and she thought for a split second that she’d misjudged the play-acting: he wasn’t  Kylo anymore. He was Ben: she was an  _ idiot— _

His huge hand came down and spanked her firmly on her left  cheek . Rey gasped and bucked a little, shocked at the arousal it stoked. “ Insolent,” he whispered, sounding like he was smiling. “That’s  _ Supreme Leader _ to you, scavenger.”

And Force, if  _ that _ didn’t just do horrible things to her body. “ Right.  S-Supreme Leader,” she managed, fingers tangled in the bedsheets.  His other hand came down firmly on her other cheek, and Rey jolted with the impact. “Oi!”

“Shh.” Ben’s hands came up to cradle her ass, rubbing, kneading. She could sense more words wavering around the edge of his mind, words like  _ surrender to  _ _ me  _ and  _ yes  _ and  _ give in to it, _ but he didn’t speak them. Instead, he pulled the robe off her completely, discarding it on the ground, and fumbled with his pants, one hand pressing against her lower back to keep her flat on the bed with her legs apart. “You want this?” he murmured, leaning over her close and pressing his naked hips to her backside. She felt the length of him, the sheer size, and went slightly stiff, panting a little. “Or you want my fingers first?”

“Fingers,” she choked, toes curling and uncurling against the  synthstone . “Please.”

Ben slipped a finger between her folds and pushed in gently, and she groaned, trying so hard not to buck against him. “Good,” he said softly as she fell still, letting him give her what she needed, and she whimpered a little as his thrusts sped up and another finger was added to the first. “ _ Good. _ You learn well, scavenger. Adaptable. An admirable trait.”

Their bond was flickering, stronger than ever: she could almost feel her own tightness around the fingers of her right hand, the excitement threatening to boil over in Ben’s body.  Tears sprang to her eyes as she clutched the blankets. “S- supr — _ Ben _ —”

“Tell me what it feels like,” he whispered, fingers still thrusting. “Tell me.”

“ Unghhh ,” she mumbled , raising her head a little. “Hot. Your—fingers. Are. Big.  It’s like—there’s something inside me I need you to t-touch, I can’t—it’s—”

“Hmm,” he said, fingers crooking gently and making her squirm. “I don’t think I’ll be able to touch whatever it is with my fingers. What do you think?”

“No,” Rey gasped, eyes screwed shut. “I think you’ll need something a bit bigger.”

“Bigger? Mm.” He withdrew his hand, and she wanted to rage at the loss, but her brain stopped processing it when she felt the thick, blunt head of his cock pressing against her soft, wet opening. He pushed gently, but his dry skin caught on hers, and she yelped in pain as he tried to clumsily push in further.

“Stop! Wait—”

Ben immediately let go of her, and she flipped onto her back, eyeing up his—

Well. She’d not seen it in  _ this _ particular condition, and he looked—he looked—Rey’s mouth was suddenly very dry. He was  _ big _ _ , _ and he stood there with his hard cock hanging out of his pants, a look on his face like he was embarrassed, a stain of pink on his cheeks. 

“Right,” she said, blinking. “Right. Okay. First things first. You need to take off all your clothes.”

“Oh,” he said blankly, and quickly undressed, leaving him fully nude. Rey pretended she wasn’t watching and patted the bed so he could sit on the edge by her. “Was the—the names, were they—it wasn’t too—”

“What? No, no. It was good. I liked that.” Rey considered: it wasn’t likely that there was any personal lubricant languishing unexpired in a drawer somewhere. She’d have to use spit. Not very pretty, but then again, it was their only option. “Can I—put my mouth on—”

“ _ Yes _ ,” he almost barked, then clamped a hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Yes. You can—”

“Just to get you, um, primed,” she amended, flustered at his eagerness, and dropped to her knees on the  synthstone , wriggling her way between his knees as his breath came in soft little spurts and his fingers dug into the blankets. His dick was even more threatening-looking up close, and Rey reached up to touch it, wrap her fingers around it. No, she couldn’t close her hand at all around the width of him, and there was clear fluid dribbling from the tip. The head was flushed and shiny and slick-looking, so she gave it an experimental rub with her thumb , spreading more of the slick fluid around and around.

Ben sucked  air into his lungs  and his thighs tensed up, massive muscles standing out in hard relief . “ H-h,” he spluttered, “d-d-ah—”

“Oh,” said Rey, and sat back. “What would you say if I licked you?”

The groan that escaped his body was like every desperate thing he’d ever said. “ _ Please _ —”

She didn’t wait for the end of the sentence. Her tongue painted a broad stripe from base to tip, and Ben shook like a leaf at the sensation, huffing in short little gasps as Rey worked her lips around him, down, down further and further, using her hands to help the process along as she got him good and ready and wet. “ Mmm ?” she asked, mouth full and eyes fluttering up to find his. “Hmm?”

Ben looked half-wrecked already, hair in his eyes and lips swollen and wet with biting, tears glimmering at the corners of his eyes. “G-good, Rey, so good, you’re—so  _ good _ —”

She could sense the pressure building in his body, deep and firm with the promise of release soon if she didn’t stop, so Rey slipped her mouth off him and  wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, standing and pushing him back a little on the bed. “Scoot your bumper back,” she told him, grinning. “No, more.”

He obeyed immediately but blinked up at her in confusion. “What—what are you—”

“This,” she said, and knelt, straddling him as he sat, bringing him to her crux and sinking him into her body, little by little. Ben’s left arm braced himself on the bed and his right arm came up desperately to curl around her body, hold her close, his face buried in her shoulder. 

“ Auuugh . Rey.  _ Rey. _ ” He sounded like a man about to come unglued, and she hadn’t even gotten two inches down. “C-can y-you  _ please _ just—j-just—” The sentence came apart into little fragment of words, half-formed sounds, and one loud gasp as she sunk herself down further and further until  _ yes, _ at last she could go no further and her backside rested on his hips. 

Something in the Force just... clicked.  _ Complete. Whole. One with all. Balance. _

He felt it, too: his fingers worked frantically at the shoulder they were wrapped around. “Rey,” he sobbed, tears streaking her hot skin. “ _ Rey. _ ”

“Stay with me,” she whispered, petting his soft black hair. “You hold on and just be—with me. Be with me.” He felt about the size of her arm, knocking about in her lungs or her spleen or something: she tried to breathe evenly.

“I’m here,” Ben wept, rolling his hips up and  _ pushing,  _ thrusting, erratic and desperate. “Here. ‘M here, Rey.”

That,  _ that _ felt like her nerves were afire, singing some wild song she’d never known, yet intimately  _ knew _ , because what else  _ could _ it be? “Ahh— _ Ben _ —"

“ _ Rey—” _

They rocked together for a moment, Rey in his lap, bouncing on his cock as he moved under her, clinging to her like she was his only rock in a storm. One over-enthusiastic thrust sent them both toppling over to the bed: Ben on his back, Rey above him, her ass firmly planted in Ben’s large hands as he raised and lowered her, doing all the work and letting her just take it, take all of him, every bit of him he had left as she moaned into his hair and clutched the silken strands in her fingers.  It only took a few more moments before he rolled her over in an ungainly movement that tangled her hair in his hands and got his knee stuck, pinned her in place with his body, and finished, sobbing out his climax into her neck as a flood of warmth filled her body—she sensed his orgasm and it rocketed her own body into one, her knees drawing up and her toes curling as her whole body shook. Sparks flew behind her closed eyes, colors and movements, her  _ spine _ was on fire, her belly tight, and it was over, her whole body going loose and soft as string as she fell away from him, panting.

Ben remained where he was, atop her, face buried in her shoulder, hands trembling as he touched her everywhere in light, soft movements: neck, shoulder, arm, throat, breast, belly. “Real,” he mumbled, when he could speak again. “You’re real.”

“ Very much so,” she said softly, brushing his hair away from his damp face. “Hey, when was the las t  time this bedroom saw any action,  d’you think?”

He let out a  weary little chuckle and rolled his head to the side, his breath hot and damp on her chest. “Hmm. Not since before the Clone Wars,  probably.”

“Ages,” she mumbled, resting her head on his chest. “Let’s… leave here.”

“Where  d’you want to go?” he asked, sleepy and sated, stroking the curve of her back muscles with one big hand. 

Rey closed her eyes. “Anywhere else. No more desert, no more sand. Somewhere that’s got green as far as the eye can see, and water . Somewhere with life.”

“Life,” he said, sounding as if he might cry again. “Yes. Yes. That sounds good.”

* * *

They retrieved the lightsabers from their burial place underneath the sands of Tatooine the next morning, packed their things aboard the Falcon, and left for  Chandrila . Rey felt she owed her friends in the Resistance at least  _ some _ explanation of where she’d been and where she was going, and after some arguing on the way they decided to come clean about Ben.

The particulars and details of the reunion? A blur, to both of them: Poe’s face pale in shock as he watched Ben come out of the Falcon onto the shimmering manicured lawn they’d landed on: Finn looking distrustful and angry, Rose keeping a wary distance. There had been a conversation, something about money: Ben Solo was apparently legally in possession of a fairly large amount of credits his mother and father had put aside, and in order to avoid a very lengthy and embarrassing public spectacle, he agreed to take the money and, as Finn put it, “ kark off to wherever you want”. By the end of the week Rose had warmed to him, along with Poe: Finn still eyed him with suspicion and looked at Rey with big, betrayed eyes, as most of the Resistance did—with the exception of Chewbacca, who roared out his approval and gave Ben approximately twelve hugs a day. 

It didn’t matter, though. Not much mattered, not anymore: nothing but her future and hope and a life that teemed with promise. Rey bought supplies and loaded the Falcon, waving goodbye to Kin, to Finn, to Poe, to Rose, to Jannah, to Chewie.

They took off, setting a course for the best planet Ben could think of that fit all Rey’s criteria. “You want to pilot her?” asked Rey, slipping out of the seat as he stepped away from the nav-computer, looking like a new person in his fresh clothes. He looked good in other colors than black, she thought: even the charcoal grey shirt and dark navy jacket was a step toward the right direction. Her own light gray clothing was comfortable and clean, and she felt rested and healthy for the first time in months.  It was as if when he had come back from the dead, so had she. 

“Me?” he asked, hesitant as they left the atmosphere. 

“Yeah. Go for it.” She smiled, standing up and indicating the seat with a flourish. Ben stood for a moment, as if he was really trying to come to terms with it, but slipped over into the pilot's seat, peering through the windscreen and letting his fingers curl around the yoke, the throttle, the hyperdrive. “How’s it feel?”

“It feels... almost right,” he said quietly. “One more thing.” Ben reached down, tapping gently along the seam of the console until a drawer sprang open and he reached inside, pulling out a pair of  aurodium -plated dice connected by a chain. Rey knew those dice: they had hung in the cockpit until she had taken them down, afraid they’d get lost in the chaos when the remaining Resistance members had escaped  Crait on the Falcon. She’d thought she’d discovered that hiding spot: it seemed Ben knew all about it—and why wouldn’t he? It was his father’s ship. Ben hung the dice on their hook, watching them sway. “There,” he said softly. “Now it feels right.”

He punched the hyperdrive into position, and the stars bled into streaks of white and blue fire.


	11. epilogue

ONE YEAR LATER 

* * *

Naboo’s three moons shone like enormous gemstones in the sky over the lake. Blue, green, and white: they washed the grass and the evening shore in soft cool light as the stars came out in the rose-colored sky. Rey sat cross-legged on the grass, enjoying the evening breeze as she watched Ben walk toward her from the lake, his body wet and gleaming from his daily swim. “Enjoying yourself?” she called softly as he approached, tugging up his pants and sitting down. 

“Very,” he said gently, kissing her on the forehead tenderly, one hand curling around her neck. “Water’s nice. Want me to take him?”

Rey looked down at the sleeping bundle in her arms: tiny nose, triangular mouth open and slack and stained with milk, too much black hair to fit on one little head. “You’d better be careful. I just got him to sleep.”

“I will,” Ben promised, and gently lifted the infant from her arms, cradling him in his own big ones. “Go have your swim.”

“ Mmm ,” she said, stripping down. “He wakes up,  _ you _ can take the three-in-the-morning feeding.” Rey didn’t miss how her husband’s eyes flashed over her body, taking in all the various changes that had taken place in the last twelve months. He didn’t seem to mind them in the slightest, but instead welcomed them, cherished them,  _ adored _ them, if that was even possible: her body and the little person they had both made, and every single aspect of being a father—he embraced it all with open arms. 

Rey walked down to the water and slipped in, eyes shutting as she submerged to her neck. The water was cool and still, making her body feel weightless. She practiced a few long, even strokes, the water soothing her tired back muscles and arms, the muscles still sore from childbirth. When she was done, she sloshed back up to the shore, padding barefoot up to where Ben was sitting, looking down into the tiny, sleeping face of their son. “He’s still asleep,” he whispered, looking up as she found her robe and slipped it on. “I’ll carry him on up to the house.”

“Okay.” Rey walked at his side, back up the path through the grass to their home: it was a sturdy old villa, small and cozy. The Falcon was still docked at the north side of the house, waiting for whatever next adventure might await them in the future: for now, vines and grasses grew tall around her landing gear, blooming with flowers, trailing up the metal and smelling sweet in the moonslight.

Inside, Rey followed Ben to the nursery, with its little window looking out to the lake, and watched from the door, smiling, as he gently set their son into his crib, tapping gently at the dice hanging from the makeshift mobile Rey made two months back. “Night, Hanan,” he whispered, kissing his fingers and pressing them lightly to the baby’s nose. Hanan snuffled in his sleep and stilled again, smacking his mouth lightly. 

Rey switched the  glowlamp off as they left the room, one hand rubbing gently up Ben’s arm. “Tired?”

“Mmm. A little.” He looked down and kissed her again, softly on the mouth. “Remind me to check the datapad in the morning. I have messages from Poe about those Force-sensitive kids they found in that pen on  Arkanis I need to respond to.”

“Poor things,” Rey said, shaking her head. “You think we could persuade someone to let us use one of those old abandoned villas up the lake for a new academy?”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll make an inquiry in the morning.” Ben yawned. “Come to bed.” His hand stroked gently at her waist, his beard tickling her cheeks as he bent to kiss her again. “I’ll do the three o’clock feeding, I promise.”

She grinned, kissing his cheek. “ Mmm . You’re the best.” His ears turned red, visible under the shorter hair he’d adopted a few months back, and he ducked slightly, teeth nibbling at her ear. 

“Am I?” he asked in a rough little voice, nose buried in her hair. “Truly?”

“Yes,” said Rey, heart so full she thought it would never be empty again. “Really.” She kissed him again, and they went to bed together, the three moons watching overhead and filling the world: lake, house, and meadow, with silvery light as the stars came out in the sky above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we are done! Credit for the name "Hanan" goes to @reyreybutt on twitter who is a brilliant artist and has amazing ideas and yeah ok [breathes] you can follow me on my fandom twitter @neon_heartbeat! thank you!


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